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USA FREEDOM Act: Just Another Word for Lost Liberty

By Ron Paul | May 3, 2015

Apologists for the National Security Agency (NSA) point to the arrest of David Coleman Headley as an example of how warrantless mass surveillance is necessary to catch terrorists. Headley played a major role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people.

While few would argue that bringing someone like Headley to justice is not a good thing, Headley’s case in no way justifies mass surveillance. For one thing, there is no “terrorist” exception in the Fourth Amendment. Saying a good end (capturing terrorists) justifies a bad means (mass surveillance) gives the government a blank check to violate our liberties.

Even if the Headley case somehow justified overturning the Fourth Amendment, it still would not justify mass surveillance and bulk data collection. This is because, according to an investigation by ProPublica, NSA surveillance played an insignificant role in catching Headley. One former counter-terrorism official said when he heard that NSA surveillance was responsible for Headley’s capture he “was trying to figure out how NSA played a role.”

The Headley case is not the only evidence that the PATRIOT Act and other post-9/11 sacrifices of our liberty have not increased our security. For example, the NSA’s claim that its surveillance programs thwarted 54 terrorist attacks has been widely discredited. Even the president’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies found that mass surveillance and bulk data collection was “not essential to preventing attacks.”

According to the congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 and the 9/11 Commission, the powers granted the NSA by the PATRIOT Act would not have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Many intelligence experts have pointed out that, by increasing the size of the haystack government agencies must look through, mass surveillance makes it harder to find the needle of legitimate threats.

Even though mass surveillance threatens our liberty, violates the Constitution, and does nothing to protect us from terrorism, many in Congress still cling to the fiction that the only way to ensure security is to give the government virtually unlimited spying powers. These supporters of the surveillance state are desperate to extend the provisions of the PATRIOT Act that are set to expire at the end of the month. They are particularly eager to preserve Section 215, which authorizes many of the most egregious violations of our liberties, including the NSA’s “metadata” program.

However, Edward Snowden’s revelations have galvanized opposition to the NSA’s ongoing violations of our liberties. This is why Congress will soon vote on the USA FREEDOM Act. This bill extends the expiring surveillance laws. It also contains some “reforms” that supposedly address all the legitimate concerns regarding mass surveillance.

However, a look at the USA FREEDOM Act’s details, as opposed to the press releases of its supporters, shows that the act leaves the government’s mass surveillance powers virtually untouched.

The USA FREEDOM Act has about as much to do with freedom as the PATRIOT Act had to do with patriotism. If Congress truly wanted to protect our liberties it would pass the Surveillance State Repeal Act, which repeals the PATRIOT Act. Congress should also reverse the interventionist foreign policy that increases the risk of terrorism by fostering resentment and hatred of Americans.

Fourteen years after the PATRIOT Act was rushed into law, it is clear that sacrificing liberty does little or nothing to preserve security. Instead of trying to fool the American people with phony reforms, Congress should repeal all laws that violate the Fourth Amendment, starting with the PATRIOT Act.

May 3, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , , | 1 Comment

Violence in Baltimore: When Did It Really Start?

By NICK ALEXANDROV | CounterPunch | May 2, 2015

Read the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal on Baltimore, and they tell you violence broke out there Monday. You hear an NPR correspondent refer to an “eruption of violence” in the city. The New Republic’s Rebecca Traister disagrees. “Violence broke out and erupted not when students threw stones at police, but when Freddie Gray suffered a spinal cord injury while in police custody, and, eventually, died.”

Maybe. But the Baltimore Sun concluded last September that, in the preceding four years, “more than 100 people [had] won court judgments or settlements related to allegations,” against police, “of brutality and civil rights violations.” Reporter Mark Puente detailed the “head trauma, organ failure, and even death” awaiting victims. This was when violence broke out.

Perhaps—though Christian Parenti, in 1997, explained that “police violence is soaring.” “By mid-August of this year Baltimore Police had already shot more than 70 civilians,” he added. It was the dawn of the “zero tolerance” era. The approach directs cops to “stop, frisk, and arrest vast numbers of young black and Hispanic men for minor offenses,” Jeffrey Rosen clarified. It made a believer of Martin O’Malley, Democrat, Mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007. The city’s population was 640,000 in 2005. There were more than 100,000 arrests that year.

Was this when violence broke out? Possibly—but in March 1980, “an off-duty police detective, without warning, shot and paralyzed a 17-year-old black youth,” Associated Press reported. “The officer later said he thought the youth, Ja-Wan McGee, was going to rob a pizza parlor, but young McGee was taking a cigarette lighter out of his pocket.” In August 1978, the Baltimore Afro-American broke a story about a trio of white cops. They issued black teenager Derek Copeland “a green pass giving the youth permission to walk neighborhood streets”—“similar,” the paper observed, “to the one issued by the South African government led by John Vorster.”

Was it then that violence erupted? Or was it early the morning of June 27, 1969, when Helen Smith sat on a stoop with Donald Best? Patrolman Alvin Nachman approached with his dog, and an order: “hold the noise down.” No neighbors had complained. The dog attacked Helen first, and the officer maced her as she tried to fight off the animal. She got 75 stitches, and Donald 32 “to close the dog bite wounds in his side and hip,” the Afro disclosed. “Both Mrs. Smith and Mr. Best were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. They were both forced to spend the night in jail after treatment for their wounds.”

If not then, violence hit Baltimore five years earlier. Raymond Petty drove there from Halifax, VA, to visit his sister Hazel in June 1964. She was ill and the outlook was not good. Raymond was in a mild car accident after arriving. His brother Louis was at the scene, the cops arrived. The Afro described how policemen bludgeoned Louis “although they had arrested him illegally, and continued to beat him in a patrol wagon while transporting him to the police station.” He was dead two days later. 

But really the violence began before that. It was 1956. There were five police killings in four months. Patrolman Charles Fennell shot Harry Boyd, Jr. in the back on June 25. Patrolman Walter Mina, Jr.’s bullet wounded Robert Harper in the leg on July 7. The blood drained from Harper’s injury until he died. On August 15, Sergeant Albert Heck killed 24-year-old Frank J. Williams. Patrolman Benjamin Ledden opened fire on September 19—in self-defense, he insisted—terminating Donald Jackson’s life at 23. Patrolman Marshall V. Brewer took out 14-year-old Benjamin Brown with a rifle he “didn’t know was loaded.” Of these five policemen, only Brewer was suspended.

Those were just the 1956 shootings. The Afro’s Elizabeth Murphy Oliver wrote of her visit to Northwestern Police Station that September. What she saw shattered her. She “hoped it was a dream.” It wasn’t. She had witnessed “a policeman beat a man and drag him roughly on the floor while the victim writhed and rolled in agony.” Vernon Johnson “was still sobbing and holding his eye” when it ended. “Blood was dripping from somewhere.” Oliver “wondered how an eye could run blood,” watched Johnson’s tears fall, “mixed with blood.” The Afro visited Johnson a week later. “His eye is still closed. He doesn’t sleep much, and his chest hurts when he breathes.” This was when the violence started.

No. In February 1942, Patrolman Edward Bender shot his second black victim, Thomas Broadus, as he fled. His friends rushed over to take him to the hospital. Bender blocked them, and Broadus died in the street before “scores of persons,” according to the Afro. This was when the violence began.

No—it was before that. Officer Charles Harris shot Roland Freeman dead on November 14, 1931. On March 29, 1930, the Afro wrote that “Officer Herman Trautner, white, killed Roosevelt Yates, an unarmed man he was seeking to arrest.” “The trouble is police brutality in Baltimore has gone as far as some people are going to stand,” the paper warned, 85 years ago.

That same year it profiled Rev. E. W. White, pastor of the Provident Baptist Church. “Baptist Minister Says Brutality Surpasses Anything South Has Seen,” ran the headline. Two decades earlier, in 1911, the Afro alerted readers that cops were “shooing colored people out of neighborhoods where a majority of the residents are white.” “It is just this kind of conduct,” a 1906 story on a mass arrest of blacks affirmed, “that often makes well-disposed people do what under other circumstances they would not do.”

“To us,” Baltimore resident D. Watkins explained this week, the city’s “Police Department is a group of terrorists;” major news outlets, on violence in Baltimore, recall the fish in the joke. “How’s the water?” the fisherman asks. “What’s water?” replies the fish, oblivious to what makes its world—like the establishment media, unaware of the violence shaping theirs.

Nick Alexandrov lives in Washington, DC.  He can be reached at: nicholas.alexandrov@gmail.com.

May 3, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

US-Saudi Led Blitzkrieg against Yemen is “An Ego Boost”

By Ahmad Barqawi | Global Research | May 3, 2015

“Slaughter Yemenis civilians, and win a free Bentley.” That pretty much sums up Saudi Arabia’s frivolous four-week military jamboree in Yemen otherwise known as Op “Decisive Storm”, if not its entire foreign (and now military) policy in the region; it may have been a “slip of the tweet” on the part of Saudi Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, a Forbes top 100 billionaire who offered via his Twitter account to award Saudi fighter-jet pilots a fleet of 100 Bentley luxury cars, a bonus if you will, for their (bombing) services rendered; nonetheless it paints a vivid, albeit repulsive, picture of how politics are conducted in the oil-rich sheikhdoms of the Gulf: at the deviant whims of their Kings and Princes.

No wonder the Arab World is a complete mess of constant wars and conflicts; everything is subject to the often violent impulses of the ruling monarchies in the GCC club who now seem more than intent on leading the entire region, Kamikaze style, into a sectarian abyss with no foreseeable point of return; and Op Decisive storm, a codename that was shamelessly borrowed from America’s wars on the Arab World, was just that; a violent outburst that started, ended and now has even morphed into Op “Restoring Hope” at the mere sectarian fancies of Saudi Arabia with the helpless lot of Arab governments tagging along for the now routine trip of bombing yet another Arab country back to the stone age, and when you have a seemingly bottomless well of petrodollars, wield all the clout of mainstream media and a far-reaching religious authority; then forming a military coalition, especially one that is purely based on vicious sectarian grounds, is almost as easy as picking players for a football squad.

This is, in a nutshell, how the Saudi Government managed to crowbar eight countries into a military coalition comprising a mishmash of Gulf Cooperation Council members (sans Oman), Gulf Cooperation Council rejects (Jordan and Morocco) and Gulf Cooperation Council scroungers (Egypt and Sudan) to intervene in Yemen against a local political movement that just so happens to adhere to a religious sect that is often faintly (and inaccurately) traced back to Shia Islam. You could almost instantly smell the vile stench of oil and sectarianism all over Saudi Arabia’s latest, ongoing still, disastrous endeavor in Yemen.

The Saudis’ delusional sales pitch this time was that Iran (who else?) was about to take over Yemen via local militant “Shia” proxies attempting a coup against the “legitimate” government of outgoing/incoming/fleeing president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi (still holed up in Riyadh till now); therefore a military intervention with all (Sunni) guns blazing was in urgent order to safeguard “legitimacy” and maintain “stability” in an already impoverished and war-torn Yemen, and we know just how much the GCC club adores peace and stability in the region, its horrific portfolio of destabilization handiwork in Libya, Syria and Iraq is a bloody testament to that.

Of course legitimacy in this (Saudi) context refers to a flip-flopping, weakling of an interim president who, only with the help of Saudi money and support, managed to win a presidential election where he was actually the only candidate on the ballot, a president who outstayed both his tenuous welcome and his presidential term, resigned, fled to the port city of Aden, rescinded his resignation and declared himself president again only to flee once more, chased after by his people, into the waiting arms of the Saudis (perhaps better known to everyone else as his sole meal tickets) but of course not before demanding that his oil-rich patrons bomb his own country into smithereens because evidently that’s what “legitimate” presidents do, at least in the GCC’s book (of horrors).

Show me one of Saudi Arabia’s (many) lackeys in the region who didn’t ask for foreign military intervention into his own country, and I’ll show you Flying Pigs! The standard refrain of extending open invitations for foreign powers to wage devastating wars is strictly (and curiously) espoused by those whom the Saudi Kingdom considers (or designates) “legitimate representatives” of their people. From the Bahraini monarchy to the current Libyan government to the 14th of March alliance in Lebanon and the entirety of the Syrian opposition mismatched posses; not one of these handpicked Saudi puppets has missed an opportunity to ask, in fact beg, for the bombardment of his own country by a foreign government, as if it’s a mandatory rite of passage for those who wish to be on the Saudi payroll/leash and get the GCC’s stamp of approval. And this Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi (none) character, whose return to power in Yemen was the only stated goal behind Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen, is no different.

We’re told that the current blitzkrieg in Yemen is all about “restoring legitimacy”, but it’s near-impossible to take that claim seriously without bursting into an uncontrollable wave of laughter; none of the Saudi-led coalition members are exactly known for their democratic credentials, on the contrary; If you played a word-association game, the words “dictatorship”, “tyranny” and “authoritarianism” (or any random combination thereof) would elicit every single time the exact member list of the coalition currently bombing Yemen today into their warped versions of democratic rule and legitimacy.

In fact the war on Yemen is essentially nothing but an ego-boost for the Saudis in response to what’s perceived by the Kingdom as Iran’s growing influence in the region especially after an interim nuclear deal was signed with the west; a shot of (military) adrenaline for the oil-rich Kingdom to assert its political relevance and nothing beyond that at a time when its foreign policy is beginning to resemble a non-stop tragic-comedy of errors and blunders.

This ego-trip masquerading as a military operation has left, so far, more than a 1,000 Yemenis killed, countless others wounded and the wanton destruction of the country’s infrastructure; and although we’re thankfully spared the sight of Saudi-led coalition forces’ spokesman waffling around, trying in vain to finagle a military feat out of indiscriminately bombing civilian areas in Yemen in his daily briefings (or awkward rendezvous with his pro-war, GCC-funded media entourage); the war still goes on, given a new lease of life under a new codename; “Restoring Hope”, despite its “rosy” moniker which has tasteless PR written all over it, promises to be just as vicious and devastating as Decisive Storm if not more; now that free Bentleys are at stake here for outstanding achievements in criminality, I’m sure these hefty royal “incentives” will show in the destructive zeal the next time coalition pilots fly their sorties and drop their load of explosives on unsuspecting Yemenis.

We were told that Decisive Storm had “fulfilled its objectives”, according to a statement by Saudi Defense Ministry. What objectives? We don’t know; deposed Yemenis president is still in Riyadh and the Houthis along with the Yemenis army control much of the ground in Yemen, now unless the real objective was the step-by-step reenactment of Israel’s wars on the Gaza strip, in which case: mission accomplished indeed with flying colors (or overflowing blood of Yemenis!), the Saudis cannot claim any success whatsoever beyond reducing the country to debris and waste; a feat that was bizarrely celebrated in GCC-funded media as a “decisive blow” to Iranian influence in the region.

At the start of Operation Decisive Storm; then Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., current foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir said that the military operation was “…designed to protect the people of Yemen and its legitimate government from a takeover by a violent extremist militia”; protecting the people of Yemen… by bombing them into blind submission and a state of near-servitude, to keep the country an impoverished Saudi implantation and nothing more, I mean how dare the Yemenis even entertain the outrageous notion of self-determination when (Saudi) fate has ordained they be reduced to nothing more than an Oil-rich Kingdom’s backyard for gutter politics and inglorious exploits (or Achilles heel for that matter).

And no, in his statement; Ambassador Al Jubair was not referring to Al Qaida or the Islamic State militias which have been laying all manner of terror and destructive waste to Libya, Iraq and Syria with complete financial, logistical, political and ideological cover from the legitimacy-loving GCC folk, by “violent extremist militia”; Al Jubair was referring to the Ansarullah group; an indigenous Yemeni faction accused of being a mere tail for Iran, you know unlike the very independent Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, when in fact it does enjoy considerable political sway and popularity in Yemen.

Al Jubair also said that “all of Saudi Arabia’s allies were consulted before launching military operations in Yemen”. I’m guessing the consultations went something like this: the Saudis telling their allies to jump and everyone replying in unison, with a-cheese-eating-grin on their faces: “how high? … and please write those checks out to cash”.

And that’s the long version too.

“Coalition of the Willing…. to Get Paid from the GCC”

Only Pakistan, which the Saudis were hoping would join in the fun of leveling another impoverished Arab country into rubble; solely based on its “Sunni credentials” of course… and nuclear power, managed to bow out of this “coalition of the unwitting” escapade; thanks, ironically, to the only problem the Saudis can’t just fix or deal with no matter how much money they throw at it: Democracy… or a semblance thereof; when the Pakistani Parliament unanimously voted to remain neutral in the war on Yemen (i.e.: not to be a member of the GCC’s Suicide Squad parade).

There you can find a group of people with enough sense about them not to blindly follow the Saudis’ caprices into the Yemenis quagmire for a handful of cash and oil barrels, and heed instead the national interests of their own country first. Sadly this was not the case with the rest of coalition members whom are mostly made up of Arab governments posing as hired yes-men for Saudi Arabia (or yes-men posing as governments for that matter).

First we have Egypt; fresh out of an economic bash in Sharm Al Sheikh, which will sure keep Egypt locked in a tight GCC financial death grip for years to come, with billions of (petro) dollars dropping off his pockets; General Abdel Fattah al Sisi (“legitimate” President of Egypt, lest we forget, because this war is all about defending legitimacy against coup’d’etats) was the first in line to fully commit to Operation Decisive Storm, ground-troop-warts and all.

The man who sold himself to Egyptians as the Second Coming of President Jamal Abdel Nasser trampled all over Nasser’s legacy by fighting the Saudis’ dirty war in Yemen in an unholy alliance with the reactionaries of the Gulf (to paraphrase Nasser himself who’s probably rolling in his grave right about now).

Suddenly and at the flick of a (Saudi) switch; Egypt’s priorities were reshuffled beyond recognition or even the slightest bit of logic to best suit the GCC’s depraved interests in the region; the Houthis taking control of the Yemeni capital somehow became an existential threat to Cairo’s national security, trumping even threats coming from a terrorism-infested Sinai peninsula or over 1,000 km of open borders with the abyss of lawlessness and violence that is Libya today. And Bab Al Mandeb Strait in Yemen became the top priority for Sisi’s Egypt at a time when the land of the Nile faces potential drought and is threatened with the vanishing face of its landmark river, thanks to Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam, along with another coalition member: Sudan.

Desperately wanting to prove that he too can wade in sectarian blood with the best of them; Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, probably lured by the promise of future-petrodollar-riches and the perfect opportunity to break his ICC-imposed isolation, stumbled over himself to heed Saudi Arabia’s call to (Sunni) arms and bomb some “infidel” Yemenis into god-forsaken oblivion (according to Sudanese state owned media). Never mind the embarrassing fact that the Sudanese “Air Force”, which is now dropping its load of bombs with a wanton exuberance on Yemeni civilians, stood completely idle and useless when Israel, on more than one occasion, practically used the entire country of Sudan as an open-field target practice for its fighter jets and F-16s under the pretext of targeting weapons’ depots and convoys destined for Palestinian Resistance factions in Gaza. Talk about priorities gone south.

It was only two years ago when the Saudis practically humiliated Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir when they blocked their own airspace to his plane as he was heading to… yes you guessed it, Iran to attend the inauguration of then newly elected president Rouhani, and now here is Al Bashir jumping into (criminal) action alongside the Saudis to bomb another Arab country into the throes of sectarian discord and potential partition.

Give that a moment’s thought and you might get a headache: Sudan, a country which itself is still reeling from a Western-sponsored partition scheme, is actively (and foolishly) participating in carving up yet another Arab country into two warring entities. There’s an almost Alice-in-Wonderland feel to it.

GCC hopefuls Jordan and Morocco of course happily tagged-along with the Saudis into yet another sectarian misadventure in what’s starting to look like a long drawn out series of auditions to join the GCC club which entail the two tiny monarchies to get down and dirty in the destruction of other Arab countries for the benefit (and amusement) of the Saudis; starting with Libya and Syria, and God knows where it’s going to go after Yemen; but you can be sure it’ll be under the spurious pretext of the “Shiite threat”,

And then you have the Arab League whose complete transformation from a schlocky, ineffectual entity into the proverbial make a wish foundation for the imperial West was epitomized in full shameless splendor in the unfortunate case of Yemen.

Gone are the days when the Arab League would grovel at the feet of NATO governments to intervene militarily somewhere in the Arab world or co-conspire with the West for yet another foreign invasion of one of its member states, now the Arab League, essentially nothing more than a mere echo chamber for the mercurial whims of the GCC nowadays, is finally taking matters into its own unreliable hands and summoning its American-made military might.

No time for niceties of the UNSC resolutions under the seventh chapter sort à la Libya or good-ol’ fashioned UN sanctions; Nah, the Arab League will no longer stoop to such pedestrian and banal methods, in the latest Arab League summit in Sharm Al Shaikh, the one which hastily rubber-stamped the Saudi war on Yemen, Arab leaders decided to resurrect a 65-year old near-dead defense pact and form a joint military force, which was about as thoughtful and welcome a notion as a fourth Netanyahu term, to counter… the Shiite threat in Yemen; kind of makes you yearn for the not-so-distant days when Arab Summits were all about vacuous, fig-leaf statements and “strong-worded” condemnations at best and public bickering and laughable finger-pointing at worst.

To put things into proper, albeit depressing perspective; neither Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine nor America’s criminal invasion of Iraq has ever prompted Arab governments to even get near that defense pact; the GCC’s unhealthy obsession with Iran, bordering on hysteria, did.

Sectarianism is the New Black

“The Israel occupation of Palestine does not exist; it is a figment of our collective imagination. Iran is the enemy and Netanyahu and co. are allies.” that’s the only way we can reconcile ourselves with the bleak reality of the Arab world today which can be summed up in one word: Iranophopia… on Wahhabi steroids.

It’s quite telling when Netanyahu’s latest address to the Congress and the entirety of the last Arab league summit seem blurred into one big anti-Iran screed; Netanyahu could’ve made the same exact firebrand speech in Sharm Al Shaikh, steeped in anti-Iran buffoonery and short on intelligence, and it wouldn’t have seemed out of place or different… except for the number of standing ovations which I suspect would have been significantly higher than what he received from the jump-and-applaud-every-other-line U.S. Congress back in March.

So Iran… or Shiism (two interchangeable terms in GCC political discourse) is the enemy, evidently the alleged threat posed by Iran (and represented through the mere “presence” of Shiite indigenous communities in some Arab countries) supersedes the real existential threat posed by the Israeli expansionist project in Palestine (does anybody remember Palestine these days?) and beyond, notions like “Arab unity” and “Arab joint military pact”, which were constantly mocked by the monarchies of the Gulf as “wooden language” whenever they’re used in the context of the Palestine/Israel conflict, are now being used (and abused with a xenophobic fervor) by the GCC-camp only in relation to Iran.

So the GCC is perfectly fine with droves of illegal European settlers migrating all the way to Palestine, expelling Palestinians from their lands and squatting comfortably in their midst, but when it comes to indigenous Yemenis for instance, god forbid they “march towards the city of Aden”.

Pan-Arabism is for suckers; sectarianism is the new black in the Arab world… in the literal and most depressing sense of the word. The map of the Arab world has been reconfigured into areas of contending Saudi and (alleged) Iranian influence, and feuding mini-statelets laden with sectarian discord and internal bloodletting thanks only to Saudi Arabia’s growing and self-inflected paranoia against the “Shiite threat”.

Nothing makes sense in the Arab world unless put in a sectarian bracket; this is what more than ten years’ worth of a constant barrage of fear-mongering against Shiites has yielded so far; a trail of failed Arab states and conflict-ridden regions.

The Saudis (controlling the majority of media outlets in the Arab World along with the rest of the GCC) have managed to turn a minority religious sect, approximately one-fifth of the world’s Muslims if not less, into the new big bad boogeyman for the remaining majority of Muslims, and what started as laughable, clumsy attempts courtesy of the GCC at provoking friction among Muslims in the wake of Bush’s invasion of Iraq; is now a no-holds-barred sectarian confrontation engulfing the Arab world where everything from suicide bombings all the way up to F-16s goes, with Israel comfortably cheering from the sidelines, unencumbered in its occupation of Palestine, as both sides of the Sunni-Shiite divide tear each other to shreds.

Dangerous Parallels

Speaking of Israel; “the coalition of willing… to get paid from the GCC” is taking entire pages right out of the Israeli military’s own scorched-earth playbook by carpet-bombing civilian areas, vital infrastructure, schools, hospitals, factories, dairy plants, airports, one football stadium and, on at least two occasions, refugee camps, all the while imposing a no-fly-zone (we all know how the GCC is fond of those) coupled with a draconian siege reminiscent of that forgotten Israeli blockade on Gaza, which by the way, went totally unreferenced in the final statement of the latest gung-ho Arab Summit. Collective punishment is the name of the military campaign here, a strict “disciplinary” treatment delivered via extensive aerial bombardment to keep the Yemeni population in check and obediently toeing the Saudi line. I wonder where we have seen all of this before.

The parallels between Operation Decisive Storm/Restoring Hope and Israel’s own criminal wars on Gaza are ominously striking and equally horrid; the guilty-by-nonexistent-association doctrine, pioneered and espoused by Israel to justify its deliberate targeting of civilians by deeming all Palestinians in Gaza, including newborns and children, to be members of Hamas, was adopted with a demented zeal by the GCC in their own military misadventure in Yemen.

Thus all these ashen-faced victims of the coalition’s bombing campaign are militant “Shia Houthis”, and every charred skeleton, burned beyond recognition and crumbling in the arms of a shrieking loved one, is that of an Iranian agent’s, or so it’s reported in the callous sectarian coverage of Gulf-funded media which seem to fetishize the murder of Yemenis and the destruction of the country’s infrastructure with frenzied abandon, even the “courtesy” of at least shoving some of the nameless casualties of the air strikes under the euphemism of “Collateral Damage” is not extended to the Yemenis; just like it wasn’t extended to the Libyans when the city of Sirte was virtually flattened to the ground during Operation “Odyssey Dawn for Benghazi/Living Hell for the rest of the country”, these weren’t residential areas and universities that NATO was bombing back then we were told, but Gaddafi’s military command and control centers. In Yemen it’s Houthis’ training camps or “concentration centers”, whatever that means.

The deliberate de-Yemenization and even dehumanization of the victims of Operation Decisive Storm/Restoring Hope is practiced on a daily basis on Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya channels. Constantly referring to the victims of the bombing campaigns strictly as “Houthis”, prompting the viewer to think they’re an invasive alien breed and not indigenous people comprising almost 40% of the Yemeni population, while true Yeminis, according to the GCC, are those Hadi-supporters pathetically paraded all over Gulf-funded networks rallying in support of the Saudi airstrikes on their country.

Aljazeera Arabic TV talk-show host Faisal Al Qasem (known for his vulgar and trashy persona which makes Jerry Springer look like the paragon of classy journalism) summed up the entire sordid coverage of GCC funded media of the war on Yemen when he screamed at one of his guests; “look at the Houthis, just look at their faces… they don’t even look like us Arabs”.

Remember those leaflets with badly translated, “pseudo-apologetic” Arabic messages that the Israeli Army used to dump on Gazans before bombing the living daylights out of them with all manner of cluster ammunition and dime bombs? Well the same leaflets with the same exact clumsy messages are being dropped on Yemenis courtesy of the GCC’s coalition of the unwitting in another disgusting display of kinship verging on pathological idol-worship towards the IOF’s criminal tactics. Thus claims by Houthi rebels that the coalition is using White Phosphorous (Israel’s favorite weapon of choice) may not be that farfetched; the harrowing images trickling out of Yemen and shown on (few) Media outlets are proof positive that Yemen is being used as a test ground for GCC’s multi-billion dollar, American-made arsenal of death and destruction, including the use of internationally banned weapons.

The complete lack of subtlety in borrowing from the Israeli military’s book (of terrorism) and openly recycling its brand of criminality up to the smallest details against the Yemenis leaves no doubt that the alliance between the GCC and the Zionist entity has taken another gigantic leap forward into an all-hands-on-deck political, military and diplomatic integration.

The war on Yemen, like all wars waged on defenseless populations including Israel’s mass murdering sprees against Palestinians, is nothing but an ego boost, Decisive Storm/Restoring Hope was probably prompted by the Interim nuclear agreement Iran managed to strike with the West last month; I don’t even want to imagine how the Saudis will react if and when a full comprehensive deal is reached come June 30.

May 3, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia Deploys Ground Troops in Yemen

Al-Manar | May 3, 2015

Saudi Arabia has deployed a “limited” ground force to Yemen’s southern port city of Aden on Sunday, officials said.

“A limited coalition force entered Aden and another force is on its way” to the southern port city, said the official who requested anonymity.

The Saudi-led coalition has been conducting an air on Yemen since March 26 but this is the first reported ground deployment inside the country. The strikes have claimed the lives of many civilians, mostly women and children.

A leading member of a militia loyal to fugitive President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, told AFP that the force “will start helping us in fighting the Houthis and (former president Ali Abdullah) Saleh’s forces”.

He said the troops will mainly back Al-Qaeda militants around the international airport, which was the focus of renewed heavy fighting overnight.

Other militia commanders confirmed that a few dozen coalition soldiers, mostly Saudis and Emiratis, were on the ground in Aden.

Coalition spokesman Ahmed Assiri had said repeatedly during the first phase that a ground intervention was on the table ‘if needed’.

May 3, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

The Myth of the Irish Recovery

Pliable Stats vs Stubborn Facts

By CILLIAN DOYLE | CounterPunch | May 2, 2015

Dublin, Ireland – Have you heard the news? Dear old Ireland is in the midst of a great economic recovery. Well, that’s according to the government, the mainstream media, the multinational sector and even Angela Merkel. Yes, one by one they have been lining up to cheer on the poster boy of European austerity. Their hearty tale goes something like this; after experiencing one of the greatest economic shocks in history, Ireland having swallowed the austere medicine mandated by the Troika became – in defiance of all economic logic – the fastest growing economy in Europe (see graph 1 of Eurostat data).

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Our Prime Minister Enda Kenny talks of a ‘Celtic Phoenix’ rising from the ashes. The domestic and international media have been crowing ‘Ireland is on the way back’, ‘Economic recovery keeps on motoring’ and ‘Ireland shows struggling Europe the way ahead’. The multinationals (MNCs) think things are going so well we should be giving the rich tax cuts again – something the government is all for. Whilst Angela Merkel has credited us as a ‘tremendous success story’ – one the austerity averse Greeks should be emulating.

But alas, this is just one version of events, and there is certainly another, albeit a less publicised and more depressing account. This is what could be described as the everyday experience of ordinary Irish people. It’s by no means the tale of triumph over adversity that the government are trumpeting. On the contrary, it is one of ongoing economic hardship, tragedy and farce.

The supposed ‘recovery’ that our leaders are harping on about is completely alien to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who have been consistently taking to the streets to protest against their policies. It’s alien to the ever growing number of people who are in long term mortgage arrears and face losing their homes, or to the people who have already lost theirs. And it’s alien to 10,000 people who just this month snapped up the entire allocation of work visas for Canada in less than 12 minutes, therein joining the 170,000 of our young people who have left since 2010.

So how do we reconcile these two contrasting/conflicting accounts? Could it be the case that a recovery is indeed underway but has yet to ‘trickle’ down to all sectors of the economy? Or is deprivation and stagnation a harsh reality which is merely being hidden by headline growth figures which just don’t add up?

Pliable Stats vs Stubborn Facts

The government are quick to point to our growth figures of 4.8% GDP and 4% GNP, but what does this really tell us? In short, not much. Ireland’s unique position in the global tax avoidance operation has rendered the standard economic indicator of GDP (gross domestic product) useless as measures of the health of the economy. It’s been well documented that the profit shifting activities of the multinational sector (MNCs) based here leads to massive distortions in this statistical indicator. So our politicians, analysts and commentators turned to GNP (gross national product) for a more accurate picture of the economy’s health.

But GNP is just GDP after we control for all the money that is flowing in and out of the country in a given period – and it too suffers from the same kind of distortions from MNCs profit shifting. Take for example the case of management consultancy firm Accenture who, along with several other big international groups, chose to relocate their headquarters to Ireland.

Now such ‘headquarters’ might consist of a small office with a single phone in it (see: Brassplate Company), which might lead you to believe makes it of zero consequence to domestic economy – but you’d be wrong. Even if such firms engage in no economic activity beyond their one roomed office, their massive profits are still recorded in the national accounts (GDP and GNP).

Then there’s issue of the major financial institutions located in the Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC) which are currently managing some of the world’s largest investment funds. The Irish Funds Industry Association (IFA) recently announced that ‘Assets domiciled in Ireland in 2014 have reached a new high of €1.6 trillion‘. This is worth more than the entire value of all final goods and services produced in Australia last year.

And whilst you might be thinking that sounds great, the effect on the real economy has been negligible – aside from the distortions to our GNP. But don’t take my word for it, it was the Central Bank that stated ‘Financial Sector developments, which are for the most part unrelated to the domestic economy, account for a significant portion of the rise in GNP’.

So right about now you might be feeling like GDP and GNP offer us no great insight into the health of the real Irish economy, but let me tell, it gets worse. The methodology by which the national accounts (GDP and GNP) are compiled was recently changed to inflate the figures. How did they do this? Well, now goods that are not even being made here are being counted as if they were.

Once again it’s the Irish Central Bank we can thank for drawing our attention to this little peculiarity as they point out that ‘goods owned by an Irish entity that are manufactured in and shipped from a foreign country are now recorded as Irish exports’. In other words, goods that never saw Irish soil or touched the hands of Irish workers are being recorded as if they were one of our exports. The only criteria being that they are owned by an ‘Irish entity’. A term so elastic it can be stretched to fit just about any purpose. I’d say you couldn’t make this stuff up, but it appears somebody already has.

The Slow Death of Domestic Demand

The only means of comprehending the true health of the economy is to look at domestic demand – or what’s left of it. Domestic demand, which makes up about three quarters of the economy, is comprised of government investment and expenditure on public services and consumer spending. Thus it doesn’t suffer from the kind of distortions attributable to the MNCs that the likes of GDP or GNP does.

The two graphs below illustrate perfectly the superficial nature of this ‘recovery’. As we can see domestic demand fell off a cliff in 2008 and has pretty much remained there. Consumer spending – which is the largest component of domestic demand – is actually below 2009 levels. Given that disposable income has fallen by 20% since 2008, largely as a result of falling wages, rising taxes and cuts to welfare spending (in other words austerity), is it any wonder that the Irish Small and Medium Size Enterprise Association (ISME) just this month described the government’s recovery as ‘glacially slow and patchy’. But surely this was to be expected? If you depress people’s incomes to breaking point where’s your demand going to come from? And if you’ve got no demand, then you’ve got recovery.

The fact of the matter is you can’t tax and cut your way out of a recession in the same way that you can’t diet and starve your way out of a famine. But with over half a million Irish people now experiencing food poverty – try telling the government that.

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A very ‘Irish’ Recovery

Have you ever heard the expression ‘that’s a bit Irish’? Collins English dictionary defines ‘Irish’ – in its adjective form – as something ‘ludicrous or illogical’. Well, judging by that standard, this is a very ‘Irish’ recovery.

Oh sure, there’s been a recovery for some. Ireland’s richest 250 individuals saw their combined wealth increase by 16% to a whopping 75 billion in the last year alone, so it’s fair to say they’re doing ok. Then there’s the multinationals, whose massive profits continue to enjoy de facto tax immunity. And things are even looking up for the politicians, who are planning to give themselves a pay increase as recognition for masterminding this great ‘recovery’.

Call me old fashioned if you will, but to me a recovery isn’t a recovery until the lives of the people who make up the bulk of that economy start to improve. We still seem a long way away from that point. And for that reason most Irish people don’t believe in this recovery; because they don’t see it and they certainly don’t feel it.

Cillian Doyle is an economist with the People Before Profit Alliance of Ireland.

May 3, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Economics | | Leave a comment