Weapons projects undermine Obama’s disarmament vision, critics say

By Joshua McElwee

New nuclear weapons projects are planned at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and the Kansas City Plant in Missouri. In fact, the pace of nuclear component development at these sites appears to be increasing.

For example, a major new nuclear component plant is well into the planning stage in Kansas City and it is to replace the aging current plant.

Each city’s weapons facility creates parts for U.S. nuclear weapons.

Nickolas Roth, director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, said the work at these plants involves “substantial new nuclear weapons projects.”

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Students Demand Divestment from Apartheid

Aidan Macdonald, The Bullet, 1 February 2010

General Dynamics. Shell. Apache Corporation. Philip Morris. Pfizer. These are weapons manufacturers, oil companies, mining corporations, tobacco companies, and pharmaceutical giants. Notorious war profiteers, environmental destroyers, and human rights violators. Morally and ethically, these are not the types of firms with which one would expect Ottawa’s Carleton University to have any sort of affiliation.

And yet, despite Carleton President Roseann Runte’s characterization of the university as an institution that is “engaged in solving real-world problems,” and her proclamation that it emphasizes human rights and social justice, Students Against Israeli Apartheid – Carleton (SAIA) has discovered that the Carleton University Pension Fund has tens of millions of dollars invested in these and other companies, which are willing contributors to the litany of social and political ailments that plague our global community.

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Malalai Joya talks about her hopes for her country, her heroes and the London conference

Interview by Mehdi Hasan

According to US government sources, more than $60bn in aid has been given to Afghanistan since 2001. Such a huge amount could have turned Afghanistan into a paradise, if it were properly spent. But that money did not reach the needy people, so I am sure that any other amount sent in future will have no impact on poor Afghans and will only widen the gap between rich and poor.

Over 70 per cent of Afghans are living below the poverty line, but the Afghan government spent $4.2m on a luxury apartment in the Trump World Tower in New York for Zahir Tanin, the permanent representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations. This is one small example how the international aid is wasted.

The conference will prepare the ground for the return to power of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party [Hezb-e-Islami]. The Afghan government says it will ask the world leaders there to remove the name of Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, from the Security Council’s blacklist. Ordinary Afghans have no faith in such conferences.

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BBC News
1 February 2010

China’s state media has accused the United States of “arrogance” and “double standards” in pursuing arms sales to Taiwan.

The state-run China Daily and the Global Times also warned that China’s threats of retaliation were real.

The Obama administration approved the $6.4bn arms sale to Taiwan last week.

China has warned of “serious harm” to relations between the two powers, the suspension of military contact and sanctions against the firms involved.

The US has said it will go ahead with the sale anyway.

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By The Associated Press
h/t

The Justice Ministry declared Sunday that no indictments will be filed against police in the case of an American activist who was hit by a tear gas canister and left comatose during a violent demonstration in the West Bank last year.

Tristan Anderson, 38, of Oakland, California, was critically injured during a Palestinian protest in the West Bank village of Naalin last March. Amir Moran, spokesman for Israel’s Tel Hashomer hospital, where Anderson is being treated, said his condition has not changed.

Justice Ministry spokesman Ron Roman said the investigation determined there was no criminal intent in harming Anderson. The investigation was opened in May and closed several weeks ago, but results were made public only Sunday.

Human rights groups charge Anderson’s case highlights a culture of impunity toward Israeli forces, because incidents of harm against Palestinians and their supporters are rarely investigated and few reach prosecution.

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