Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - give her dixie

#2146
Watch this video to see a priest call for the resignation of the pope.
We need more brave preists like him to stand up and be counted. Not protect "Mother Church" with their silence.
His bishop compares him to "Doubting Thomas"..........................

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3a6myDAJTo&feature=player_embedded
#2147
Your Tax Dollars at War:
More Than 53% of Your Tax Payment Goes to the Military


By Dave Lindorff'

If you're like me, now that we're in the week that federal income taxes are due, you are finally starting to collect your records and prepare for the ordeal. Either way, whether you are a procrastinator like me, or have already finished and know how much you have paid to the government, it is a good time to stop and consider how much of your money goes to pay for our bloated and largely useless and pointless military.

The budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which has to be voted by Congress by this Oct. 1, looks to be about $3 trillion, not counting the funds collected for Social Security (since the Vietnam War, the government has included the Social Security Trust Fund in the budget as a way to make the cost of America's imperial military adventures seem smaller in comparison to the total cost of government). Meanwhile, the military share of the budget works out to about $1.6 trillion.

That figure includes the Pentagon budget request of $717 billion, plus an estimated $200 billion in supplemental funding (called "overseas contingency funding" in euphemistic White House-speak), to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some $40 billion or more in "black box" intelligence agency funding, $94 billion in non-DOD military spending (that would include stuff like military activies funded through NASA, military spending by the State Department, etc., miilitary-related activities within the Dept. of Homeland Security, etc.), $123 billion in veterans benefits and health care spending, and $400 billion in interest on debt raised to pay for prior wars and the standing military during peacetime (whatever that is!).

The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation-adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out war footing.

This military spending in all its myriad forms works out to represent 53% of total US federal spending.

It's also a military budget that is rising at a faster pace than any other part of the budget (with the possible exception of bailing out crooked Wall Street financial firms and their managers). For the past decade, and continuing under the present administration, military budgets have been rising at a 9% annual clip, making health care inflation look tiny by comparison.

US military spending isn't just half of the US budget, though. It is also half of the entire global spending on war and weaponry. In 2009, according to the venerable War Resisters League, US military spending accounted for 47% of all money spent globally on war, weapons and military preparedness (it's probably closer to 50% now). What makes that staggering figure particularly ridiculous is that America's allies--countries like France, Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan--account for another 21% of the world's military spending. Fully 12 of the top-spenders among big military-spending nations are either allies of the US, or are friendly or completely non-threatening countries like Brazil and India. That is to say, America and its friends and allies account for more than two-thirds of all military spending worldwide.

China, in contrast, probably the closest thing to a real "threat" to American interests because of America's treaty commitments to the island nation of Taiwan, and China's counter claim that the island is a part of the PRC, spends only some $130 billion on its military, much of which is actually devoted to maintaining military control over the country's own 1.3 billion people, some of whom might prefer to be independent, or to be freer, if they weren't under the military jack-boot.

The next biggest military spender, Russia, spends less than $80 billion a year on its decrepit military--about one-twentieth of what the US spends--and isn't even technically an enemy of the America anymore. Its military is largely busy keeping restive regions from spinning off from the mother country, anyhow.

Meanwhile Iran, which the White House and Congress are portraying as America's arch enemy, despite its not having invaded another country in hundreds of years, isn't even on the list of the top 17 military big-spenders. Iran's current military budget is a teensy $4.8 billion (no surprise since its economy is about equal to Finland's), about the same as the estimated $5 billion spent on the military by North Korea--America's other "major enemy." Each of those country's military budgets is about one-quarter of the military budget of Australia. Combined, they add up to about two thirds of the military budget of the Netherlands.

Just to give one an idea of how small $4.8 billion is in comparison to the $1.6 trillion that the US is spending each year on war and planning for war, that number is roughly what the Pentagon plans to spend over the next year on childcare and youth programs, morale and recreation programs and commissaries on its bases! It's about what the Pentagon will spend acquiring replacement Seahawk, Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters this year.

For the average American, what all this means is that of every dollar you send to the IRS, 53 cents will be going to pay for blowing stuff up, fattening the wallets of colonels admirals and generals, bloating the portfolios of investors in military industries, and of course funding the bonuses paid to executives of those companies, and the campaign chests and private expense accounts of the members of Congress who vote for these outlandish budgets. Your money will also be going to pay for the salaries and the bullets of those brave heroes over in Afghanistan who are executing kids, killing pregnant women (and then digging out the bullets and claiming they were stabbed by their families), and for the anti-personnel weapons that are creating legions of legless Afghani kids.

Next time you hear that the government needs to cut funds for providing medical care to the children of laid-off workers, or that supplemental unemployment funds are running out, next time you hear that federal funds that are needed to fund extra teachers at your school are being cut, or that Social Security benefits need to be cut back, or the retirement age needs to be increased to 70, next time you hear that your local post office has to be shut down for lack of funds, next time you hear that Medicare benefits need to be reduced, think about that 53% of your tax payment that is going to finance the most enormous war machine the world has ever known.

And ask yourself: Is this really necessary? Is this really where I want my money going? Is this really even making me safer or my country stronger?
#2149
A couple of must see video's exposing what Israhell/US troops get up to in Palestine.
This is what US taxpayers fund and support.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1-_JmXQt0&feature=player_embedded#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm_btvBgZLE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT1AuJf4ZJ0
#2150
A Sign of Empire Pathology

More US military personnel have taken their OWN lives than have died in action


Here is a shocking statistic that you won't hear in most western news media: over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are official figures from the US Department of Defence, yet somehow they have not been deemed newsworthy to report. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide - more than the 320 killed in Afghanistan and the 150 who fell in Iraq (see wsws.org).



Since 2001, when Washington launched its so-called war on terror, there has been a dramatic year-on-year increase in US military suicides, particularly in the army, which has borne the brunt of fighting abroad. Last year saw the highest total number since such records began in 1980. Prior to 2001, the suicide rate in the US military was lower than that for the general US population; now, it is nearly double the national average.



A growing number of these victims have been deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. What these figures should tell us is that there is something fundamentally deranged about Washington's "war on terror" - which is probably why western news media prefer to ignore the issue. How damning is it about such military campaigns that the number of US soldiers who take their own lives outnumber those killed by enemy combatants.



What is even more disturbing is that the official figures only count victims of suicide among serving personnel. Not included are the many more veterans - officially classed a civilians - who take their own lives.



Most likely, these deaths are reported in some small-town newspaper in "a brief" news item with no context or background as to what drove these individuals to take their own lives. It is estimated that the suicide rate among veterans demobbed from fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq is as high as four times the national average. The US Department of Veteran Affairs calculates that over 6,000 former service personnel commit suicide every year.



Many of these men have come home to a country they have fought for only to find no jobs, their homes repossessed by banks that have enjoyed trillion-dollar bailouts and broken relationships.



Meanwhile, President Obama - the erstwhile peace candidate - has taken on the role of Commander in Chief with gusto, telling his countrymen and women that they are fighting a "just war" to "defend American lives". Only a year ago, he was campaigning for the presidency on a ticket to end such wars. Now, more than his predecessor, George W Bush, Obama is committing to wars without end. How soul-destroying is that for a grunt holed up in a bunker, with his young family back home probably telling him that they have just signed up for food stamps? In their guts, these US soldiers must know - as many other ordinary people around the world do - that these wars are nothing but a desperate, pathological bid by a dying power to salvage its crumbling empire - an empire that enriches a tiny elite and impoverishes the majority. Is it any wonder that many of them simply lose the will to live?
#2151
Hedley, this new law is just something else. One more piece of evidence to show just how Israhell have turned into an Apartheid state.
Where are they going to deport the Palestinians to? Or maybe they will just shoot them, like they have been doing for years anyway? Deport native Palestinians, and at the same time allow over 500,000 illegal settlers, mainly young Jewish US citizens, to live in the West Bank?

But hey, as long as there are stupid US senators and congressmen, (and eejits like to), Israhell will have an endless supply of weapons, cash, aircraft, bombs and bullets to slaughter and ethnicially cleanse Palestinians and steal more of their land.

Plus, this week, Wikileaks are to release another video showing US troops slaughter 87 innocent Afghans. Wonder what sort of deluded immature response the US and to will come out with to justify it?

Oh, the land of the free and the home of the brave........ US troops, very brave individuals indeed.....
The world sure is a safer place when they are in control. Lets see how brave they are if they attemp another illegal war in Iran?
#2152
I came across this article yesterday, and thought it was an Aprils fools joke.
However, upon closer examination, it is true.

In relation to the Afghan killings mentioned above, the US army has made peace with the father of
the 2 sons, 2 daughters, and grandchild, by giving them 2 sheep. Yes, thats right, 2 sheep!

Now, if only Bin Laden had of arrived in the US following 9/11 with a few sheep, a couple of drop calves,
and maybe a goat, then they would have had no reason to go to illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If its good enough to give sheep out in Afghanistan for killing innocent people, it should be good
enough for the US.

However, would there be enough sheep in the world to make up for all the innocent people slaughtered
by the US and their arms across the world over the years?

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Afghanistan/special-forces-apologize-afghan-civilian-deaths-sheep/story?id=10320603&page=1
#2153
Quote from: muppet on April 08, 2010, 11:02:25 PM




Its on the cards.......................

http://www.rte.ie/business/2010/0408/quinn.html

State-owned Anglo Irish Bank has proposed injecting €700m into Quinn Group as part of a financial restructuring package, RTÉ News has learned. The plan, if agreed, would see €150m injected into Quinn Insurance and €550m would be used to pay off bondholders.

Anglo's proposal would see money injected into Quinn Insurance to address its solvency shortfall. Other banks owed €1.2 billion would be paid off with Irish Government bonds.

Anglo would take a majority stake in Quinn Group, which has interests including wind energy and manufacturing. This deal, in effect, would mean the State helping the insurance business out of its current difficulties.

But any such plan faces significant hurdles. The Financial Regulator has concerns, and a deal would also have to be approved by the European Commission.

Last week, provisional administrators were appointed by the High Court to Quinn Insurance. The Financial Regulator said it took the court action when it became aware that certain subsidiaries of Quinn Insurance had given guarantees which have the effect of reducing the insurer's assets by around €448m. The company and regulator are due to argue their cases in court on Monday.

Insurance brokers reassured on Quinn Insurance

Earlier, the joint provisional administrators appointed to Quinn Insurance wrote to Irish insurance brokers to reassure them that the company is continuing to trade and all of its liabilities are being met.

The administrators said the letter was a response to comments and information issued by the Irish Brokers Association (IBA).

The administrators, Paul McCann and Michael McAteer, referred to reports in the media yesterday where the IBA speculated that in certain scenarios, such as liquidation, Quinn Insurance's commercial customers would have limited access to the Insurance Compensation Fund.

Today's letter told brokers that during an administration procedure, by law, the company cannot be placed into liquidation.

'In the history of the administration process since it was introduced in 1983, no company which has gone into administration has gone into liquidation. We therefore write to reassure you that the legal position set out by the Insurance Brokers Association is not relevant as QIL is in administration,' the letter says.

'We may apply to the High Court to have access to the Insurance Compensation Fund for any sums which we and the court consider are required to enable us to carry on the business of QIL and to perform our other functions under the relevant legislation,' the provisional administrators said.
#2154
They were a couple of very good articles, and filled in a few spaces in my understanding of it all.
It looks like he is in big trouble all right, and unless the gaurantees are removed, the Insurance business is for sale.
It is a real pity as so many people will loose their jobs.

I just hope he can pull it all together and save the Group.
#2155
And then then are these brave US soldiers running amok in Afghanistan.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7087637.ece


US special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened, Afghan investigators have told The Times.

Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, outside Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public.

The claims were made as Nato admitted responsibility for all the deaths for the first time last night. It had initially claimed that the women had been dead for several hours when the assault force discovered their bodies.

"Despite earlier reports we have determined that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men," said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale, a Nato spokesman. The coalition continued to deny that there had been a cover-up and said that its legal investigation, which is ongoing, had found no evidence of inappropriate conduct.

The Kabul headquarters of General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces, claimed originally that the women had been "tied up, gagged and killed".

A senior Afghan official involved in a government investigation told The Times: "I think the special forces lied to McChrystal."

"Why did the special forces collect their bullets from the area?" the official said. "They washed the area of the injuries with alcohol and brought out the bullets from the dead bodies. The bodies showed there were big holes."

The official, who asked not to be named until the results of the investigation have been made public, said that the assault force sealed off the compound from 4am, when the raid started, to 11am, when Afghan officials from Gardez were finally allowed access to the house.

At least 11 bullets were fired during the raid, the investigator said, and the shooting was carried out by two American gunmen positioned on the roof of the compound. Only seven bullets were recovered from the scene.

"I asked McChrystal, 'why did the Americans clean some of the bullets from the area?' They don't have the right to do that," the official said.

Haji Sharabuddin, the head of the family who were attacked, told The Times last month that troops removed bullets from his relatives' bodies, but his claims were impossible to verify. The hallway where four of the five victims were killed had been repainted and at least two bullet holes had been plastered over.

Video footage of the raid's aftermath, collected by Afghan investigators, shows close-up shots of one man's bloodstained and punctured torso and walls with blood on them. The Afghan official's conclusion that the bullets were removed is based on the testimony of survivors, analysis of the photographs and the missing bullets.

Nato promised a joint forensic investigation in a statement issued after the raid, but Rear Admiral Greg Smith, the coalition's director of communications in Afghanistan, said that this had proved impossible because the bodies were buried the same day in accordance with Islamic custom.

Instead Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior sent its top criminal investigator from Kabul, and a Canadian brigadier-general led a separate military inquiry.

The Afghan investigation differed in one respect from The Times' findings. Survivors told this newspaper that Saranwal Zahir, the police officer's brother, was shot when he tried to shout that his family was innocent. The women, who were crouching behind him, were killed in the same volley of fire. Afghan investigators believe that Mr Zahir was carrying an AK47 and wanted to avenge his brother's killers. The women were clustered around him, trying to pull him inside the house, when the second US gunman opened fire, killing all four of them.

Footage collected by the Afghan team also shows a man in United States Army uniform taking pictures of the bodies. The findings have not been made public. The Interior Ministry is expected to pass a report to the Attorney-General's office, which will decide whether or not it can press criminal charges.

The family had more than 25 guests on the night of the attack, as well as three musicians, to celebrate the naming of a newborn child.

"In what culture in the world do you invite ... people for a party and meanwhile kill three women?" asked the senior official. "The dead bodies were just eight metres from where they were preparing the food. The Americans, they told us the women were dead for 14 hours."

In a statement yesterday, Brigadier-General Eric Tremblay, a Nato spokesman, said: "We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt forever by the families.

"The force went to the compound based on reliable information in search of a Taleban insurgent, and believed that the two men posed a threat to their personal safety. We now understand that the men killed were only trying to protect their families."
#2156
Did anyone see this video that has appeared showing US troops in Bagdad killing unarmed civilians,
including 2 Reuters press men.

Listen to them laugh at the sight of dead men, and show no mercy for children caught up in the attack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaqY12VHFv4
#2157
Ulick, how about you provide some evidence that the pope didn't cover up abuse scandals?
#2158
Did anyone catch this nonsense today from the popes personal preacher?
Now, this excuse takes some beating.

Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher on Friday likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.

Reaction from Jewish groups and victims of clerical sex abuse ranged from skepticism to fury.

The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said in a Good Friday homily with the pope listening in St. Peter's Basilica that a Jewish friend wrote to him to say the accusations remind him of the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism."

So far I haven't seen St. Peter burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests. ... The Vatican is now trying to turn the perpetrators into victims.

- Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews
The 82-year-old pontiff looked weary as he sat near the central altar during the early evening prayer service before he was scheduled to take part in a candlelit Way of the Cross procession near the Colosseum that commemorates Christ's suffering before his crucifixion.

The Vatican later officially distanced itself from Cantalamessa 's Good Friday remarks.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi contacted The Associated Press in Rome to say such parallelism can lead to misunderstandings. He said the comments did not represent the position of the Church and that Cantalamessa was not speaking as a Vatican official.

Thousands of Holy Week pilgrims were in St. Peter's Square as the church defends itself against accusations that Benedict had a role in covering up sex abuse cases.

The "coincidence" that Passover falls in the same week as Easter celebrations prompted Cantalamessa to think about Jews, said the preacher, a Franciscan who offers reflections at Vatican Easter and Advent services.

"They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms," the preacher said.

Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews, said Cantalamessa's remarks were "a so-far-unheard-of insolence."

"It is repulsive, obscene and most of all offensive toward all abuse victims as well as to all the victims of the Holocaust," Kramer said. "So far I haven't seen St. Peter burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests. I'm without words. The Vatican is now trying to turn the perpetrators into victims."

Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, U.S. director of interreligious relations for the American Jewish Committee, called the comments "an unfortunate use of language."

"The collective violence against the Jews resulted in the death of 6 million, while the collective violence spoken of here has not led to murder and destruction, but perhaps character assault," Greenebaum said.

Quoting from the letter from the Jewish friend, who wasn't identified by Cantalamessa, the preacher said that he was following "with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world."

"The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," Cantalamessa said his friend wrote him.

In the sermon, he referred to the sexual abuse of children by clergy, saying "unfortunately, not a few elements of the clergy are stained" by the violence. But Cantalamessa said he didn't want to dwell on the abuse of children, saying "there is sufficient talk outside of here."

Peter Isely, the Milwaukee-based director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, denounced the anti-Semitism analogy as "reckless and irresponsible."

"They're sitting in the papal palace, they're experiencing a little discomfort, and they're going to compare themselves to being rounded up or lined up and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz?" he said. "You cannot be serious."

Benedict didn't speak after the homily, but, in a tired-sounding voice, chanted prayers. He leaned up to remove a red cloth covering a tall crucifix, which was passed to him by an aide. He took off his shoes, knelt and prayed before the cross.

The head of Germany's Roman Catholic bishops said earlier in an unusually forthright Good Friday statement that the church in the pope's homeland failed to help victims of clerical sex abuse because it wanted to protect its reputation.

Clerics have neglected helping abuse victims by a "wrongly intended desire to protect the church's reputation," Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg said.

The news about sexual and physical abuse of children by priests and other employees leaves the church with "sadness, horror and shame," he said.

Reports of new cases have been cropping up almost daily in neighboring Austria, where the country's top Catholic, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, held a service for victims and acknowledged church guilt in the controversy this week.

Austria's Platform Of Those Affected By Church Violence — a group that includes victims, psychologists, psychiatrists and lawyers — said about 150 people had called a new hot line for victims of abuse by clergy and church workers, with about a third claiming they had been sexually abused and the rest reporting physical or verbal abuse.

In 1980, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, allowed a pedophile priest to be transferred from the northwestern city of Essen to undergo therapy in Munich, where he was then archbishop.

The Munich archdiocese says Benedict wasn't involved in a lower-ranking official's later decision to allow the priest to return to pastoral work. The Rev. Peter Hullermann went on to work with youths again and was sentenced for sexual abuse in 1986.

Germany's prestigious Regensburg Domspatzen boys choir once led by the pope's brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, as well as the school that sends many students to the choir, also have faced allegations of sexual and more general physical abuse.

An Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims.

Italian prosecutor Pietro Forno said that once investigations have gotten under way, church officials have never tried to interfere or hinder the probes. But he added, "In the many years that I have dealt with this, never — and I stress, never — have I received a single complaint from bishops, or priests. And that's a bit odd."
#2159
General discussion / Re: Gaza under attack again
April 02, 2010, 01:08:56 AM
They are Israeli's. Enough of a reason.
To critise them is anti semitic.
#2160
General discussion / Re: Gaza under attack again
April 02, 2010, 12:53:31 AM
And he just gave them another $3 billion the other day.
And $3 billion more per year for the next 10 years.