Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

In former West Berlin, an artificial hill known as Devil’s Mountain rises 375 feet above the Brandenburg plain. Constructed by the Allies after World War II, the hill contains an estimated 12 million cubic meters of debris gathered from the post-war Berlin wreckage. Beneath the rubble, Albert Speer’s Nazi military-technical college lies buried and forgotten, part of Hitler’s plan to create a new Berlin. Atop the hill sits a former U.S. and British spy station, its white tower surrounded and topped by a series of matching geodesic domes. During the Cold War the NSA Field Station Teufelsberg intercepted East German and Soviet radio communication. Since 1991, it has remained abandoned.

A new battle over this site has emerged. A private developer purchased the land after the Berlin real estate boom of the 1990s, but the saturated market made construction unprofitable. Meanwhile, veterans groups that served at Teufelsberg are petitioning the U.S. Congress to create a Cold War monument. During this battle, however, the structure has descended from historic preservation through mismanaged redevelopment plans to vandalism and informal urban touring

For some, sites like Teufelsberg are eyesores of a long military presence. For others, they are a place of mysterious history and forbidden exploration. For Architecture for Humanity, an international design advocacy nonprofit based in San Francisco, these sites represent a world of creative opportunity waiting to be released.

Every other year, Architecture for Humanity’s Open Architecture Challenge brings international attention to issues in the built environment affecting the health, prosperity, and well-being of under-served communities. This year’s Open Architecture Challenge targets abandoned, closed, and decommissioned military sites and asks how they can be repurposed to publicly serve the communities surrounding them.

Unrestricted Access

The 2011 Open Architecture Challenge: [UN] RESTRICTED ACCESS challenges architects and designers to partner with community groups across the world and develop innovative solutions to re-envision closed, abandoned, and decommissioned military sites. The six-month competition requires designers to work with the communities surrounding these former places of conflict to transform oftentimes hostile locations into civic spaces built for the public good.

This year marks a milestone: in the United States alone more than 235 military sites are scheduled for closure or realignment. The U.S. military was under orders to downsize 5 percent of its entire infrastructure on or before September 15, 2011 in accordance with the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) ruling. The ruling will force the relocation of more than 125,000 military personnel and their families.

It’s not just inside the United States. Dotting the global landscape, decommissioned military installations leave their mark. They are symbols of triumph, pride, pain, and the unforeseen consequences of military aggression. These abandoned structures and ghost towns can disrupt neighborhoods and split entire communities. …

Read on: www.fpif.org/articles/repurposing_military_bases

To register for the competition visit the [UN] RESTRICTED ACCESS webpage.

US President Barack Obama signed a law Saturday imposing tough new sanctions on Iran for its nuclear research programme. …

The new sanctions aim to effectively close down payment lines between Iran and its oil customers for the first time. Foreign firms doing business with Iran’s central bank, through which the majority of oil transactions pass, could be punished by being excluded from the US market.

In effect, this amounts to an embargo of Iranian oil, which has long been considered the only truly “crippling” sanctions that can be applied against Iran. An embargo is technically an act of war, and this is certainly how Iran has characterised them.

Their response of threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz is another factor making these sanctions different. Such an act would inevitably lead to an armed confrontation between the US and Iran. Finally, the wider context to these sanctions is the fact that Iran and the US/Israel are already effectively engaged in a low intensity war. …

There will always be customers for Iranian oil, and some firms will simply judge that excluding themselves from the US oil market is an acceptable price. The US will also be reluctant to act against key powers such as China, Russia and India.

There is also not an explicit oil boycott, which the EU will consider, and in my opinion reject at this point, given the increasing purchases of Iranian oil by cash-strapped Greece and Italy. Iran will still be able to barter goods and services for oil – as they do regularly with China. However, we may well be moving toward a situation in the future where Iran’s customers are located almost exclusively in Asia.

The impact of these sanctions on the price of oil is noticeable but not yet huge. What will drive oil prices through the roof is the escalation of military rhetoric. Iran knows this, and of course benefits from a price hike, and this probably explains why it has talked up a retaliatory blockade.

Most analysts believe this is a bluff and Iran will not commit economic, political and military suicide. The US will try and mitigate a rise in Iranian oil prices by persuading key allies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to increase production. …

The headlines said it all. The Huffington Post teaser shouted: HAPPY NEW YEAR: YOU CAN NOW BE DETAINED INDEFINITELY while Infowars proclaimed a more sedate: Happy New Year: Obama Signs NDAA, Indefinite Detention Now Law of the Land.

The NDAA is the $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act that President Obama signed into law on New Year’s Eve. In addition to funding the United States’ ongoing wars and the 900 military bases it maintains in 130 countries, the bill provides for the U.S. president to have draconian worldwide authority to have the military seize anyone suspected of “terrorism” or providing aid to terrorists or “associated forces” anywhere in the world, including U.S. citizens on American soil, and detain them without charge or trial indefinitely. “It’s a little New Year’s present to our constitutional republic,” Alex Jones says angrily in a YouTube video.

Amnesty International announced it would join over 45 other organizations to protest the NDAA and the military prison at Guantanamo in front of the White House on January 11 – the 10th anniversary of the “war on terror” prison. More information is available here. …

Read on: http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/02/happy-new-year-don%E2%80%99t-bother-asking-for-an-attorney-when-you’re-detained