US preparing new sanctions over Iran’s missile program
Press TV – December 31, 2015
US President Barack Obama’s administration is reportedly preparing fresh sanctions on international companies and individuals over Iran’s missile program.
They would be the first financial sanctions on Iran since Tehran agreed to a landmark nuclear agreement in July and present a serious challenge to the accord’s implementation.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the sanctions would target a number of Iranian nationals and international companies over suspected involvement in Iran’s missile program.
“We’ve been looking for some time at options for additional actions related to Iran’s ballistic missile program based on our continued concerns about its activities,” an Obama administration official was quoted as saying.
“We are considering various aspects related to additional designations, as well as evolving diplomatic work that is consistent with our national security interests,” the official said, on condition of anonymity.
US officials claim the new sanctions are in line with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement, and the Treasury Department can impose new sanctions on Iran over its missile development.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of the state, has made it clear that Iran would consider any new sanctions a breach of the JCPOA.
In an October letter to President Hassan Rouhani, outlining his conditional approval of the JCPOA, the Leader said that in case of a violation, “the government would be obliged to take necessary measures and halt JCPOA activities.”
“Imposing any sanctions at any level and under any pretext by any side of the negotiations will be considered a breach of the JCPOA,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in his letter.
Iran has also defended its right to carry out missile tests for defensive purposes, saying none of his country’s missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
“It’s our legitimate defense. These are not missiles that are designed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads and, therefore, it is within our right to self-defense,” said Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an interview published by The New Yorker earlier this month.
According to the Journal, the sanctions would prohibit US or foreign nationals from conducting business with targeted companies.
US banks would also be required to freeze any assets the companies or individuals hold inside the American financial system.
Tehran is already disappointed by Obama’s signing of a Congress bill this month aimed at limiting travels to Iran and trade with the country.
Iran says the law violates a July nuclear accord and amounts to new sanctions on the country.
The US Supreme Court is also mulling a case on appropriating $2 billion of Iranian assets frozen in a bank in New York.
The Obama administration has urged the tribunal not to overturn the decisions of US circuit and appeals courts to use the funds.
Iran warns US against sanctions over missile program
Press TV – December 31, 2015
Iran has warned the US against imposing any fresh sanctions on international companies and individuals over the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program, saying Tehran will respond to such meddlesome measures.
“Such measures are unilateral, arbitrary and illegal and the Islamic Republic of Iran has [already] served notice to the US government [in this regard],” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, said on Thursday.
Jaberi Ansari was reacting to reports that the US government is planning new sanctions targeting about 12 companies and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates for their alleged involvement in Iran’s missile program.
“The Islamic Republic will respond to any meddlesome action against its defense program by strengthening its defense might,” he said.
The planned sanctions, reported by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, come as the US prepares to lift restrictions on Iran over its nuclear program within the framework of Iran’s July nuclear agreement with the P5+1 group of countries, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Jaberi Ansari reiterated that Iran’s missile program is solely for defense purposes and in line with national security interests.
“No measure can deny the Islamic Republic of Iran its legitimate and legal rights to boost its defense might and national security,” he said.
Iran has already said that any fresh sanctions on the country would be a flagrant violation of the JCPOA, whose implementation is expected in January.
US burned $231 million over sat-aided missile system: Report
Press TV – December 26, 2015
A new report details how the United States government threw away over $230 million of taxpayer money on a failed satellite-aided missile system.
According to a Los Angeles Times article published on Saturday, the project known as Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS) was initially represented in 2009 as an “unprecedented capability” to protect America and its allies against a nuclear attack.
A key congressional supporter described the project by the US Missile Defense Agency as “a necessity for our country.”
But the PTSS was officially “discontinued” on October 1, 2013 over a raft of issues.
The US missile shield program was meant to use a network of nine to 12 satellites, orbiting high above the equator, to detect missile launches and track warheads in flight with great precision.
It would be able to tell apart real missiles from decoys – an elusive capability known as “discrimination.” It would help guide US rocket-interceptors to destroy incoming warheads. And it would do all this at a fraction of the cost of alternative approaches.
Based on those promises, the administration of President Barack Obama and Congress poured more than $230 million into design and engineering work on PTSS starting in 2009. Four years later though, the government quietly killed the program before a single satellite was launched.
The Missile Defense Agency said PTSS fell victim to budget constraints. In fact, the program was spiked after outside experts determined that the entire concept was hopelessly flawed and the claims made by its advocates were erroneous. It was the latest in a string of expensive failures for the missile agency.
The Los Angeles Times said it examined hundreds of pages of congressional testimony and other government records and interviewed leading defense scientists and others familiar with PTSS.
The paper found among other things that in their equatorial orbit, the satellites would have been blind to warheads flying over the Arctic – one of the likely paths for missiles fired at the US.
Also, with at most 12 satellites, the system could not have provided continuous tracking of missiles across the Northern Hemisphere, as promised. That would require at least twice as many satellites.
Additionally, the PTSS could not have reliably distinguished warheads from decoys and harmless debris. The satellites’ sensors were not powerful enough.
The Missile Defense Agency’s cost estimate – $10 billion over 20 years – was way off. PTSS would have cost at least $24 billion over that time period, according to an independent assessment done for the Pentagon and Congress.
And that even if the system lived up to its billing, it would have been largely redundant. Existing satellites and radars can do much of what PTSS was supposed to do.
“It’s an example of what can go wrong in defense procurement: Huge amounts of money just pissed away on things that should never have advanced beyond a study,” the US daily quoted David K. Barton, a physicist and radar engineer who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed US missile-defense programs, including PTSS.
US court mulls appropriation of Iran assets
Press TV – December 25, 2015
The US Supreme Court is mulling a case on appropriating $2 billion of Iranian assets frozen in a bank in New York.
Over 1,300 Americans are reportedly pressing the US government, judiciary and Congress to pay them billions of dollars in awarded damages over two bombings in Beirut and Saudi Arabia in 1983 and 1996.
Iran has dismissed any role in the attacks and rejected the US judicial system’s ruling to let the purported plaintiffs use Bank Markazi’s almost $2 billion held in Citibank accounts.
The case has reportedly moved to the Supreme Court, with the Obama administration urging it not to overturn the decisions of US circuit and appeals courts to award the plaintiffs.
The White House and US congressional Republicans and Democrats reportedly agree on the case.
In 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order blocking all of Bank Markazi’s assets held in the US in order to prevent Tehran from repatriating them.
At the same time, Congress passed a law which included a provision making it easier for the Americans to use Iranian funds frozen in the US.
Iran says the action was unconstitutional because Congress was encroaching on the power of the judiciary.
Iran’s Bank Markazi says the US Congress passed the law to change the outcome of the case. It has asked the US federal courts to decide whether that violates the constitutional separation of powers.
With the case moved to the US Supreme Court now, the outcome is set to affect a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and the West.
Tehran is already disappointed by Obama’s signing of a Congress bill aimed at limiting tourist travels to Iran, saying it violates the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as the nuclear accord is called.
On Thursday, US media said each of the 53 hostages held during the 1979 takeover of the American embassy in Tehran by Iranian students would receive compensation under a spending bill passed last Friday.
The budget bill reportedly includes a provision authorizing each of the 53 hostages to receive $10,000 for each day of the 444 spell they were held captive.
In addition, spouses and children would separately receive a one-time payment of $600,000. Thirty-eight of the former hostages are still alive, US media said.
The Caesar Photos and Impunity in Syria
By Steven Chovanec | Reports From Underground | December 19, 2015
Western media are reporting headline claims that “new evidence supports claims about Syrian state detention deaths”, saying that “a leading rights group has released new evidence that up to 7,000 Syrians who died in state detention centres were tortured, mistreated, or executed”, noting that this information is a moral wakeup call and demanding that officials being held to account should be “central to peace efforts.”
However, as is usually so, not everything is quite as it seems. So let’s take a look at the facts.
First the timing.
As has been commonplace the timing of the reports like these have almost always coincided with important diplomatic meetings or just after important UN resolutions are passed.
For example, beginning in mid-March claims began to pour in that Assad had been using chlorine bombs against his opponents. Media reports would cite the fact that only 2 months later the government had already been accused of using chlorine 35 times. What they failed to mention however was that no claims were made for an entire 7 months before this. So what changed after these 7 months?
Well, a UN resolution was passed condemning the use of chlorine, that’s what.
The government’s alleged chlorine campaign “began just over a week after the UN security council passed a resolution under chapter 7 of the UN charter condemning its use,” the Guardian would report. For more than half of a year no claims are made and then a week after a UN resolution is passed, all of a sudden a total of 35 are made in just under 2 months.
If Assad was really using chlorine, why would he wait a full 7 months only to use it at the exact time that it would prove to be the most disastrous for him?
This, coupled with the fact that former OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) inspectors admit that there was insufficient evidence to prove the use of chlorine, let alone assign blame for who did it.
And further troubling still is that the claims came from the “White Helmets” “civil defense group”, who have been notorious for producing false claims against the Syrian government. In actuality the White Helmets are part of a slick propaganda campaign aimed at mobilizing support for foreign intervention and calling for a “no-fly zone” to oust the president. They have financial links to Western-backed NGOs who relentlessly work towards furthering the US agenda in the region, and are themselves embedded with al-Qaeda and ISIS. Their primary function is to demonize the Syrian government while acting as al-Qaeda’s clean-up crew, both literally and in terms of propaganda, as one video shows them waiting to clean up dead bodies moments after al-Qaeda commits summary executions against unarmed civilians. They have produced numerous fake videos, fake photos, and fake narratives in order to manipulate public opinion towards their bias.(1)
Needless to say, their words aren’t credible.
In terms of the the Caesar photos, they too are published days before an important Syrian peace conference between the US and Russia, further raising questions as to whether the timing has anything to do with helping Syrian detainees or everything to do with political impact.
As noted by Human Rights Investigations, a previous report of the photos was done by Carter-Ruck and Co. Solicitors of London and published through CNN and the Guardian in January of 2014. The Carter-Ruck report claims that the 55,000 images available show 11,000 dead detainees. However, according to the recent HRW report only 28,707 of the photos are ones that they have “understood to have died in government custody” while the remaining 24,568 are of dead soldiers killed in battle. That is, half of the alleged “torture victims” are actually dead soldiers.
Of the remaining half (6,786), HRW maintains that they “understand” the photos are of dead detainees, this is where the media is getting the “7,000” figure from, yet they themselves admit later on that they were only “able to verify 27 cases of detainees whose family members’ statements regarding their arrest and physical characteristics matched the photographic evidence.”
So, in other words, half of the original batch of photos aren’t torture victims, while of the other half only 27 can be verified by HRW.
There is also reason to doubt the reliability of these 27 cases.
Previous reports of the photos also coincided with important diplomatic events like the 2014 Geneva II conferences. However, at that time, UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay admitted that the reports were unverified: “the report… if verified, is truly horrifying.” While it was admitted by outlets like Reuters that they were unable “to determine the authenticity of Caesar’s photographs or to contact Caesar” while Amnesty International notes that they too “cannot authenticate the images.”
One wonders what happened during this time that allowed HRW to do what these others could not just a year prior.
Leaving that aside however, let’s say that they are true, that they do prove that the Syrian government tortured 27 individuals, and that holding the officials “to account should be central to any peace efforts.”
It follows then that the major offenders should be held to account. Namely the United States.
Of the top 10 recipients of US foreign aid programs in 2014, all of them practice torture while at least half of them are reportedly doing so on a massive scale, according to leading human rights organizations.
For example, according to the UN torture in Afghanistan’s prisons continues to be widespread, while according to Human Rights Watch in Kenya police “tortured, raped, and otherwise abused and arbitrarily detained at least 1,000 refugees between mid-November 2012 and late January 2013.”
The worst abuses of torture in government detention centers however were in Nigeria, which received $693 million of US taxpayer money. There, according to Amnesty, nearly 1,000 people died in military custody in only the first 6 months of 2013. This means that “Nigeria’s military has killed more civilians than (Boko Haram) militants did” within the same time frame. Recently, the Nigerian army, instead of fighting Boko Haram has massacred upwards of 1,000 Muslims belonging to a peaceful movement opposed to extremism.
In terms of Israel, by far the leading recipient with $3.1 billion, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel accused the government of torturing and sexually assaulting Palestinian children suspected of minor crimes, while also keeping detainees in cages outside during winter. “The majority of Palestinian child detainees are charged with throwing stones, and 74 per cent experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.”
Not to mention our own widely publicized torture program.
According to the official narrative, the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programs began under Bush after 9/11 and were considered “rogue elements” and “aberrations” to normal CIA practice, they were approved at the highest levels of government, but were eventually ended under Obama in 2009.
Yet as leading international security scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed found in a recent and thorough investigation “Obama did not ban torture in 2009, and has not rescinded it now. He instead rehabilitated torture with a carefully crafted Executive Order that has received little scrutiny.”
It demanded interrogation techniques be brought in line with the US Army Field Manual, which is in compliance with the Geneva Convention. However, the manual was revised in 2006 to include 19 forms of interrogation and the practice of extraordinary rendition. “A new UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) review of the manual shows that a wide-range of torture techniques continue to be deployed by the US government,” Ahmed notes, “including isolation, sensory deprivation, stress positions, chemically-induced psychosis, adjustments of environmental and dietary rules, among others.”
In his book “Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation” the highly renowned Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Alfred McCoy shows that from the 1950s onward the CIA spent billions “improving” interrogation techniques.
At the start, the emphasis was on electroshock, hypnosis, psychosurgery, and drugs, including the infamous use of LSD on unsuspecting soldiers, yet they proved ineffective. It was later found that sensory disorientation and “self-inflicted pain”, such as forcing a subject to stand for many hours with arms outstretched, were far more effective means of breaking individuals; the exact torture techniques it has been shown the US still employs to this day.(2)
The CIA found that by using only the deprivation of the senses, a state akin to psychosis can be induced in just 48 hours.
They found that the KGB’s most devastating torture technique of all was not crude physical beatings, but simply forcing victims to stand for days on end. “The legs swelled, the skin erupted spreading legions, the kidneys shut down, and hallucinations began” explains McCoy, “all incredibly painful.”
Refined through decades of practice, “the CIA’s use of sensory deprivation relies on seemingly banal procedures: heat and cold, light and dark, noise and silence, feast and famine,” yet this combines to form “a systematic attack on the sensory pathways of the human mind” for devastating effect.
These are not “aberrations”, but instead the fruition of over half a century’s work in the experimentation of the science of cracking the code of the human mind, of the perfection of psychological torture into its most sophisticated forms.
“With the election and re-election of President Barak Obama, the problem of torture has not, as many of us have once hoped, simply disappeared, wiped away by sweeping executive orders,” McCoy explains, “Instead it is now well into a particularly sordid second phase, called impunity.”
Simply put, impunity is the political process of legalizing illegal acts.
“In this case, torture.”(3)
Instead of ending, US torture “continues to be deployed by the US government” in its most destructive forms.
It has been re-packaged and rehabilitated, codifying into law, and vanished from the general public consciousness.
Furthermore, not only does the US engage in torture on a mass scale, it and its allies as well “outsource” their torture to various regimes, utilizing their intelligence and security services to do their dirty work for them.
It was recently revealed by numerous Libyan dissidents that the UK government had entangled itself in a deep and sordid relationship with Muammar Gaddafi that amounted to “a criminal conspiracy”, as heard before the UK high court.
A conspiracy where the UK had become “enmeshed in illegality” and involved in “rendition, unlawful detention and torture.”
The victims claim that British intelligence routinely blackmailed them, threatened their families with unlawful imprisonment and abuse if they did not cooperate. Information was extracted through torture in prisons in Tripoli and fed into the British court systems as secret evidence that could not be challenged.
Yet this merely represents a wider trend whereby Western governments commit horrendous crimes in collusion with foreign states, and then use those same acts as justification for aggression against them.
The United States attempted to justify the invasion of Iraq on non-existent WMD’s after it had supplied the same weapons to the country decades prior to wage war on Iran.
As well it was Gaddafi’s alleged brutality and use of torture that was invoked to justify the devastating attack on Libya that has left the country in shambles and overrun with suffering and terrorism.
And so too with Syria.
Not only is the United States by degrees of magnitude more culpable for the crime of torture, it also was intimately involved in offshoring its crimes to Syrian jails.
A key participant in the CIA’s covert rendition program, Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered subjects.”
So while torture in Syria is all too real, what is commonly left out is 3 little words: “with our support.”
First we utilize, exploit, and propagate the atrocities, and then proceed to bask in our own moral righteousness as we denounce others for the crimes that we helped commit, utilizing them to justify further atrocities and aggression for shortsighted geopolitical aims.
If “officials being held to account” are really “central to any peace effort” in regards to torture, we know exactly where to find them: right here at home in Washington and London.
Notes:
- For more on this, see Vanessa Beeley’s great reports, “‘White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists, Disguised as ‘Humanitarians’ in Syria”, 21st Century Wire, Pt. 1: http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/01/white-helmets-new-breed-of-mercenaries-and-propagandists-disguised-as-humanitarians-in-syria/, Pt. 2: http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/01/white-helmets-new-breed-of-mercenaries-and-propagandists-disguised-as-humanitarians-in-syria/, & overview with interview: http://www.mintpressnews.com/us-propaganda-war-in-syria-report-ties-white-helmets-to-foreign-intervention/209435/.
- Alfred McCoy, Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation.
- Alfred McCoy giving a lecture on his book “Torture and Impunity” at Madison’s Overture Center, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgazW9sRrW4.
We’re all terrorists now
By Sam Gerrans | RT | December 12, 2015
The concept of terrorism has been extended from carrying out physical acts in which innocent people are killed, to wrong opinions, sweaty palms and disagreement with government. If you want to find a terrorist, soon all you will have to do is look in the mirror.
Words are political. They change shape to suite agendas.
In the 1970s, ‘terrorist’ meant a paid-up member of the IRA, the Irgun, ETA and the like. These were bad people perpetrating evil and indiscriminate deeds upon a defenceless public. They used bombs, worked in cells, and killed people without warning before fading into the shadows.
Although the UK had legislation specifically geared to deal with what is called terrorism on the books, people deemed terrorists, when they were caught, were prosecuted under existing laws – i.e. for actual crimes they had committed.
Bobby Sands, for example, who fought and died for the IRA cause, was incarcerated for nothing more sinister than owning illegal firearms.
Since 9/11 and the implementation of the so-called Patriot Act (and equivalent legislation in other countries), the definition of terrorism is itself becoming a source of terror.
As part of this process, we are being taught to live with the new nomenclature of ‘terror suspect’; that is you haven’t done anything wrong, but you might.
The Independent reports that: “315 terror suspects were arrested between September 2014 and September 2015, according to new figures from the Home Office.”
The same article continues: “[…] it seems what we are seeing is an increase in terrorism-related fear rather than terrorism itself – totally understandable of course in itself, but not when it leads to the kind of heavy-handed policing that can actually radicalize more people.”
Read another way: the British Government is harassing increasing numbers of innocent people and generating both fear and the chance of more ‘radicalization’ thereby.
The no-fly list
The Huffington Post reports that one can be identified and placed on a ‘no-fly list’ for any number of reasons.
It tells us: “government officials have secretly characterized an unknown number of individuals as threats or potential threats to national security. In 2013 alone, 468,749 watch-list nominations were submitted to the National Counterterrorism Center. It rejected only one percent of the recommendations.”
This is nearly half-a-million US citizens in one year; this means they are finding almost 1,400 new American enemies a day.
The article goes on to list seven criteria government agencies use to put a person on a list. These criteria are vague and admit to the broadest and most subjective interpretation; in short they break down to: we don’t like the cut of your jib.
Yes, some life-failed bureaucrat you will never meet can decide – extra judicially – that you may not travel on an aeroplane.
The no-gun list
If there is to be no due process, why stop there?
Obama certainly agrees. The Guardian tells us: “Closing the No-Fly List loophole is a no-brainer,” Barack Obama tweeted on Tuesday, arguing that Congress should pass laws to prevent anyone on the government’s terrorist watch list from buying a gun.”
I see: the president calmly tweets that revoking the Constitution he swore to uphold is a “no brainer,” and we can all go about our business.
Terrorist events
Since Obama is so concerned with guns, he might want to do something about all the smoking guns that feature so prominently in the so-called terrorist attacks on US soil.
RT’s Marina Portnaya did a piece on the release of a report, which identifies the FBI as the mastermind of 95 percent of all domestic terrorism in the US.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, senior judicial analyst for Fox News, concurs. He tells us that of the 20 terrorist attacks the FBI claims to have foiled on US soil, three were thwarted by members of the public and the remaining 17 were masterminded and carried out by the FBI itself.
Who is a terrorist?
The so-called War on Terror is worldwide.
For its part, the French government is educating its population to spot a terrorist.
The Independent gives us these bonmots: “The French government has launched a campaign which appears to warn parents that their children may have been recruited by terrorists if they stop eating baguettes.”
Other tell-tale signs of nascent radicalism include deciding not to watch television.
US airport security staff operate on a much more scientific basis. The Telegraph reports on a leaked document revealing: “Excessive yawning, strong body odour and arrogance are among the suspicious signs that US airport staff are trained to associate with potential terrorists.”
Excessive yawning? Remember that if find yourself on a stopover in a US airport on a long-haul flight.
Other warning signs include: “protruding or throbbing neck arteries, whistling, excessive laughter, and verbally expressing contempt for the screening process.”
The full list of 17 ‘fear factors’ staff are trained to spot include: arriving late for a flight, sweaty palms, and a pale face indicating the recent shaving of a beard.
More government
Naturally, the only rational response to this exploding bomb of suspicion is more government. Was there ever any doubt?
The UK government’s website tells you exactly what to do in the event of a terrorist attack: Step 1: run. Step 2: Hide. Step 3: Tell the authorities. Step 4: Wait for armed police to arrive (and keep your hands where they can see them). Step 5: Be ready for those authorities to point guns at you and treat you ‘firmly’ (i.e. brutalize you).
No mention of repealing UK gun laws so that British adults can defend themselves, of course.
Imagine what would happen to any real terrorist threat in Britain if one in three Britons carried a handgun.
No. What we need is more government; more intrusion by the very agencies that not only benefit from the events they pretend to protect us from (and use said events to take away our rights), but which – according to all objective analysis – are also central in bringing those events to pass.
So terrorism has morphed from real actions which killed people – the destruction of the King David Hotel by the Irgun or the Iranian Embassy siege – to intuitions about people, sweaty palms and the non-eating of French bread.
The simple definition for such a subjective and arbitrary application of power is this: tyranny.
Why stop there?
Since there is no place for principle or due process in this new tyranny, insanity must follow.
Under such a regime things just are because someone – in this case an opinion-leader – says they are.
For his part, supposed science guy Bill Nye makes a strong connection between what he calls ‘climate change’ and what he terms ‘terrorism’.
The Huffington Post reports: “Nye’s reasoning hinges on a water shortage in Syria, which researchers have blamed on climate change. As Nye explained, the shortage has stunted farming and pushed young people to look for work in more densely populated areas.
“Young people have gone to big cities looking for work. There’s not enough work for everybody, so the disaffected youths, as we say – the young people who don’t believe in the system, believe the system has failed, don’t believe in the economy – are more easily engaged and more easily recruited by terrorist organizations, and then they end up part way around the world in Paris shooting people,” Nye asserts.
The Independent breathlessly informs us that one of the country’s most senior advisers on health has warned: “Obesity is such a threat to women it should be treated as a “national risk” – like terrorism, natural disasters and cyber attacks.”
And Obama claims that the ‘climate change’ conference in Paris (the only outcome of which will doubtless be more government control for them and more taxes for us), offered the chance to show the ‘terrorists’ that the world was standing together against them.
Sound insane? That’s because it is; until we realise that none of this has anything to do with genuine science or actual terrorists – or if there is any correspondence it is purely coincidental.
We are living through a revolution, a play for total power; or in modern parlance: full-spectrum dominance.
And we have been here before. Last time round it was called Communism. It accused its critics of being counter-revolutionaries or reactionaries. And it murdered those people – and many besides – in their tens of millions.
This time round it is called Freedom.
And if you disagree with it, or don’t smile fast enough or wide enough – or suffer from body odour or weigh too much – today it can stop you from getting on a plane. Tomorrow it may deny you the right to defend yourself.
After that, it may decide on some new arbitrary method of protecting everyone else from you.
Still think your government is there to protect you?
I hope so.
Or you may be a terrorist.
Sam Gerrans is an English writer, translator, support counselor and activist. He also has professional backgrounds in media, strategic communications and technology. He is driven by commitment to ultimate meaning, and focused on authentic approaches to revelation and realpolitik. He is the founder of Quranite.com – where the Qur’an is explored on the basis of reason rather than tradition – and offers both individual language training and personal support and counseling online at SkypeTalking.com.
Blocking Democracy as Syria’s Solution
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | December 12, 2015
The solution to the crisis in Syria could be democracy – letting the people of Syria decide who they want as their leaders – but it is the Obama administration and its regional Sunni “allies,” including U.S.-armed militants and jihadists, that don’t want to risk a democratic solution because it might not achieve the long-held goal of “regime change.”
Some Syrian opposition forces, which were brought together under the auspices of the Saudi monarchy in Riyadh this past week, didn’t even want the word “democracy” included in their joint statement. The New York Times reported on Friday, “Islamist delegates objected to using the word ‘democracy’ in the final statement, so the term ‘democratic mechanism’ was used instead, according to a member of one such group who attended the meeting.”
Even that was too much for Ahrar al-Sham, one of the principal jihadist groups fighting side-by-side with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, the two key elements inside the Saudi-created Army of Conquest, which uses sophisticated U.S.-supplied TOW missiles to kill Syrian government troops.
Ahrar al-Sham announced its withdrawal from the Riyadh conference because the meeting didn’t “confirm the Muslim identity of our people.” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sought to maintain a secular government that protects the rights of Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other religious minorities, but Sunni militants have been fighting to overthrow him since 2011.
Despite Ahrar al-Sham’s rejection of the Saudi-organized conference, all the opposition participants, including one from Ahrar al-Sham who apparently wasn’t aware of his group’s announcement, signed the agreement, the Times reported.
“All parties signed a final statement that called for maintaining the unity of Syria and building a civil, representative government that would take charge after a transitional period, at the start of which Mr. Assad and his associates would step down,” wrote Times’ correspondent Ben Hubbard.
But the prospects of Assad and his government just agreeing to cede power to the opposition remains highly unlikely. An obvious alternative – favored by Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin – is to achieve a ceasefire and then have internationally supervised elections in which the Syrian people could choose their own leaders.
Although President Barack Obama insists Assad is hated by most Syrians – and if that’s true, he would presumably lose any fair election – the U.S. position is to bar Assad from the ballot, thus ensuring “regime change” in Syria, a long-held goal of Official Washington’s neoconservatives.
In other words, to fulfill the neocons’ dream of Syrian “regime change,” the Obama administration is continuing the bloody Syrian conflict which has killed a quarter million people, has created an opening for Islamic State and Al Qaeda terrorists, and has driven millions of refugees into and through nearby countries, now destabilizing Europe and feeding xenophobia in the United States.
For his part, Assad called participants in the Saudi conference “terrorists” and rejected the idea of negotiating with them. “They want the Syrian government to negotiate with the terrorists, something I don’t think anyone would accept in any country,” Assad told Spanish journalists, as he repeated his position that many of the terrorists were backed by foreign governments and that he would only “deal with the real, patriotic national opposition.”
Kinks in the Process
Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Friday that he was in contact with senior Saudi officials and noted, “there are some questions and obviously a couple of – in our judgment – kinks to be worked out” though expressing confidence that the problems could be resolved.
A key problem appears to be that the Obama administration has so demonized Assad and so bought into the neocon goal of “regime change” that Obama doesn’t feel that he can back down on his “Assad must go!” mantra. Yet, to force Assad out and bar him from running in an election means escalating the war by either further arming the Sunni jihadists or mounting a larger-scale invasion of Syria with the U.S. military confronting Syrian and now Russian forces to establish what is euphemistically called “a safe zone” inside Syria. A related “no-fly zone” would require destroying Syrian air defenses, now supplied by the Russians.
Obama has largely followed the first course of action, allowing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and other Sunni “allies” to funnel U.S. weapons to jihadists, including Ahrar al-Sham which fights alongside Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front as the two seek to transform Syria into a Islamic fundamentalist state, a goal shared by Al Qaeda’s spin-off (and now rival), the Islamic State.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has termed Obama’s choice of aiding the jihadists a “willful decision,” even in the face of DIA warnings about the likely rise of the Islamic State and other extremists.
In August 2012, DIA described the danger in a classified report, which noted that “The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, later ISI or ISIS and then the Islamic State] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The report also said that “If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared salafist principality in eastern Syria” and that “ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”
Despite these risks, Obama continued to insist that “Assad must go!” and let his administration whip up a propaganda campaign around claims that Assad’s forces launched a sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Though many of the U.S. claims about that attack have since been discredited – and later evidence implicated radical jihadists (possibly collaborating with Turkish intelligence) trying to trick the U.S. military into intervening on their side – the Obama administration did not retract or clarify its initial claims.
By demonizing Assad – much like the demonization of Russian President Putin – Obama may feel that he is deploying “soft power” propaganda to put foreign adversaries on the defensive while also solidifying his political support inside hawkish U.S. opinion circles, but false narratives can take on a life of their own and make rational settlements difficult if not impossible.
Now, even though the Syrian crisis has become a tsunami threatening to engulf Europe with a refugee crisis and the United States with anti-Muslim hysteria, Obama can’t accept the most obvious solution: compel all reasonable sides to accept a ceasefire and hold an internationally supervised election in which anyone who wants to lead the country can stand before the voters.
If Obama is right about the widespread hatred of Assad, then there should be nothing to worry about. The Syrian people will dictate “regime change” through the ballot box.
Democracy – supposedly one of the U.S. government’s goals for Middle East countries – can be the answer to the problem. However, since democracy can be an unpredictable process, it might not guarantee “regime change” which apparently makes democracy an unsuitable solution for Syria.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Where’s the Rule of Law in Our War on ISIS?
By L. Michael Hager | CounterPunch | December 11, 2015
The San Bernardino massacre has elicited from politicians and others many calls for stronger military action and even demands for travel restrictions on Muslims and the closing of mosques.
In his oval office address to the nation on December 6, President Obama rightly called on Americans “to reject proposals that Muslim Americans should somehow be treated differently.” He assured the nation that our success in defeating terrorists “won’t depend on … abandoning our values.”
Yet in a seeming contradiction, he promised to hunt down terrorist plotters “in any country where it is necessary” and use air strikes to “take out ISIL leaders and their infrastructure in Iraq and Syria.”
Before 9/11 our “common values” included respect for the rule of law. Not any more, it would seem. Over the past decade and a half, we have witnessed increasing disrespect for the rule of law. Preemptive strikes, targeted drone killing and the torture, sexual humiliation and forced feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo violate basic legal norms for human rights and the conduct of war– norms which the U.S. helped establish in the wake of World War II.
The main obstacle to the rule of law today is Guantanamo. As a continuing monument to such prison abuses as torture, forced feeding and indefinite detention, Guantanamo is a valuable resource for ISIS in its radicalization and recruitment of young Americans.
Despite President Obama’s first day in office pledge to close it down, Guantanamo continues to confine many innocent prisoners, claim huge sums from taxpayers and shame all Americans by what it represents to the world.
According to the nonprofit organization Human Rights First, 107 prisoners remain in Guantanamo (down from the total number of 780). The current roster includes:
* Detainees approved for release: 48,
* Detainees convicted by military commission: 3,
* Detainees currently being tried by military commission: 7,
* Detainees being held without charge or trial: 49.
Of the current Guantanamo population, 90 (84% of the total) have been imprisoned for more than ten years.
It costs US taxpayers approximately $387 million a year to operate Guantanamo (an annual cost of more than $3 million per prisoner).
According to Andy Worthington (closeguantanamo.org), the group of prisoners recommended for prosecution includes Mohamedou Ould Slahi, author of the recent bestseller, Guantanamo Diary.
Given Slahi’s “extraordinary account of rendition, captivity and torture” and the apparent failure of his captors to elicit evidence of wrongdoing despite more than 15 years of interrogation and imprisonment, his continuing incarceration raises a serious question: are the CIA and DOD continuing to detain him in order to continue to block disclosure of the names of his torturers (redacted from his published account)?
Sadly, the ongoing affront to the rule of law has raised few eyebrows in the media or in government institutions charged with legal oversight. Rarely, do we hear reference to law or legal norms by our elected officials. Indeed, the Department of Justice appears complicit in the torture scandals of Bush/Cheney.
TV anchors and newspaper reporters blithely echo the demands of political candidates that the U.S. “carpet bomb” Islamist targets and “take out suspected terrorists” anywhere in the world. They ignore international laws and conventions that put a strict limit on preemptive strikes and prohibit the endangering of civilians.
More distressing is the general failure of our religious institutions, universities and bar associations to speak out against the current degrading of the rule of law. Why has there been no strong outcry from the nation’s premier law schools as they witness military strikes that violate the UN Charter and international conventions? Why do they ignore the lack of due process, indefinite detention and the inadequacies of jerrybuilt “military commissions?”
Why have our churches, synagogues and mosques not questioned human rights violations (some detailed in the recent Senate report summary) including the now regular use of drones for targeted killing and the reliance on torture and force-feeding?
Bombing, drone strikes and internal restrictions on the freedom of religion and movement are more likely to breed terrorists than build security. If we should, as our President suggests, avoid abandoning our values—values that include respect for the rule of law– we should accelerate the Periodic Review Boards (PRB) process, free Guantanamo prisoners approved for release and try the remainder in U.S. courts.
Before his term of office ends, the President must fulfill his promise of 2009 and close Guantanamo, with or without Congressional support.
L. Michael Hager is cofounder and former Director General, International Development Law Organization, Rome.
Clinton’s Weak Campaign Finance “Pillar”
By Rob Hager | CounterPunch | December 8, 2015
Hillary Clinton was widely quoted telling a handful of Iowans on April 14: “We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all — even if it takes a constitutional amendment.” The Washington Post identified this statement as “one of several pillars of her 2016 presidential campaign.” CBS based its headline for this Clinton story on the quote that this pillar represented one of “four big fights that I think we have to take on.” Her communications director, elaborating on the transcript of Clinton’s spare comments on the subject, added “It’s something she’s really concerned about.”
It is safe to assume that after months crafting the four policy pillars of her candidacy, and the way the message itself was tightly controlled from Iowa, that Clinton’s particular phrasing for her “unaccountable money” pillar was precisely as intended by her campaign team.
The Post’s headline writers and others converted Clinton’s hypothetical statement, “if it takes a constitutional amendment,” into a far more definite “support for a constitutional amendment,” as if Clinton is expected to propose or endorse a constitutional amendment during her campaign.
Slate‘s dog-whistle headline, relying on nothing more than the above quote in the Post, transformed her statement even further: “Hillary Clinton Hints at Support for Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United.” The Post, and presumably Clinton in Iowa, said nothing at all about Citizens United, let alone support for any “amendment to overturn” it. What Clinton did say is closer to the opposite of either of those two concepts.
Clinton’s statement “supports” not getting all or any part of interested money out of politics, which is what people advocating an “Amendment to Overturn Citizens United” think they are supporting. Clinton is speaking solely about “unaccountable money.” Such money can become fully “accountable” without being exluded from the pay to play system of US politics. Clinton is simply advocating its disclosure.
Under her proposal the embarrassing flood of money into US politics, anticipated to explode even further in her own campaign, will not be stanched. It would be accounted for by disclosing its provenance, which is now often left undisclosed by use of 527‘s and other IRS conduits. She considerately wants Americans to know who is buying the power to operate their erstwhile democracy against their every interest. There is no assurance that such disclosure would have any significant impact on the pervasive corruption of U.S. politics.
Under systemic corrupion, disclosure actually can help circumvent one of the few remaining inconveniences to plutocrats. Plutocrats who feel their “freedom of speech” constrained by new $5 million contribution limits per person per election cycle jointly endoresed by Congress and the Supreme Court can spend as much as they want on “independent” electioneering provided, so the cover story goes, they do not “coordinate” their expenditures with the campaigns. But to buy influence the candidate needs to know who is paying them off. By bridging this inconvenient gap in the system, formal disclosure required for everyone by law is a perfect solution for legalized coordination. Accordingly, disclosure is the reform that Democrats and their allies are selling to their supporters, and the reform the plutocrat justices of the Roberts Court also promote with no fear of significantly upsetting the corrupt political system they maintain.
Where corruption is systemic, Clinton’s proposition that actual “accountability” is even possible, other than in the sense of mere disclosure, is itself highly dubious. When the system requires all competitors to be on the take, disclosure alone fails to create any effective new options for making politicians actually accountable to voters. In this system where the Supreme Court legalizes corruption and the mass media collects a toll to mediate their messages, only the proxies of plutocrats are on offer to voters.
As a lawyer, Clinton must already understand that no constitutional amendment is required to accommodate a legislative remedy for her “unaccountable money” pillar. Laws under the existing Constitution can require all the additional disclosure that she could possibly want. Disclosure requirements for campaign contributions have existed in federal law since the Progressive Era’s Publicity of Political Contributions Act of 1910, 36 Stat. 822. The constitutionality of such disclosure laws has never been doubted.
In Ex Parte Curtis (1882) (8-1) the Supreme Court ruled, without even bothering to argue the point, that the power of Congress to prohibit political corruption outweighs any asserted First Amendment interest in allowing political donations. If the First Amendment argument made by the petitioner in Curtis, and dismissed by the government’s brief as unworthy of serious attention, albeit accepted by a lone dissenter, could not legalize money in politics against a total ban, then certainly requirements that political investments merely be disclosed could have raised no conceivable objection before the Nixon Court reversed the Curtis rule without mentioning it nearly a century later.
The Supreme Court held disclosure laws to be constitutional in Burroughs v. United States (1934) (9-0) when it upheld the strengthened disclosure requirements of the 1925 Federal Corrupt Practices Act. As that Court explained, disclosure requirements are “calculated to discourage the making and use of contributions for purposes of corruption.” This most conservative of any Supreme Court majority prior to the current Roberts 5 resoundingly rejected the very idea that disclosure requirements might be constitutionally invalid, calling the “proposition so startling as to arrest attention.” Quoting from another deeply conservative Gilded Age Court lineup in Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 (1884), the 1934 Court explained that “government … must have the power to protect the elections on which its existence depends from violence and corruption … the two great natural and historical enemies of all republics.”
Later in United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 625 (1954) the Supreme Court again expressly approved mandatory disclosure of political investments connected with some actual speech in the context of lobbying. See also National Association of Manufacturers v Taylor (D.C. Cir. 2009) (upholding lobbying disclosure under Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007). Chief Justice Warren held in Harriss that,
the voice of the people may all too easily be drowned out by the voice of special interest groups seeking favored treatment while masquerading as proponents of the public weal. This is the evil which the Lobbying Act was designed to help prevent… Congress… is not constitutionally forbidden to require the disclosure of lobbying activities. To do so would be to deny Congress in large measure the power of self-protection.
Since the outset of the current era of systemic corruption of politics the Supreme Court responsible for making that corruption systemic has nevertheless, without reservation, reaffirmed the same principles. Disclosure was endorsed by Buckley v Valeo (1976), the judicial mother lode for legalizing systemic corruption, and again by Citizens United (2010), the bete noir of all professional activists working the campaign finance silo. When the Roberts Court overturned aggregate limits for political investors in McCutcheon (2014) , Justice Roberts lauded this “less restrictive alternative” which also “given the Internet, … offers much more robust protections against corruption” than ever.
Though the constitutionality of disclosure laws has for a century been of little or no demonstrable utility in preventing the current systemic levels of political corruption, it is nevertheless regularly trotted out in this manner as a cure-all by politicians and other operatives of this corrupt system. Clinton has built her “unaccountable money” pillar on this well-worn tradition, and nothing more. Current disclosure laws are certainly inadequate. But this is because Congress is now too mired in systemic corruption, and the FEC too deadlocked, to enact even tepid and marginal reforms necessary to make disclosure even potentially more effective.
Clinton surely knows the Supreme Court’s historic, consistent, and virtually unanimous, rulings make clear that there is no need for a constitutional amendment to require full disclosure of currently “unaccountable” or “dark” money. She must have spent some tiny fraction of what has been projected to be an over $2 billion campaign to do some elementary initial research and strategy development about one of her expensive campaign’s four basic policy pillars – which she offers as her reason for running. Her issues team must have advised her to use the hypothetical “if” when mentioning an amendment because they know that an amendment is not necessary to accomplish the limited Clinton disclosure agenda. Hypothetical mention of an amendment does help obfuscate the limited nature of her agenda. Besides, mentioning the Constitution makes her proposal sound more important. Amendment advocacy, however hypothetical in the case of the “unaccountable money” pillar, does help distract constituents’ political energies to futile pursuits, while also deflecting responsibility to others. This is the strategy that has worked for Democrats on the corruption issue.
The rush to enlist Clinton in their cause by the Democrats’ professional activist allies who have committed themselves to an amendment approach suggests that they either do not know, or do not care, that no amendment is necessary to achieve the mostly useless “accountability” for money in politics that Clinton supports. Clinging to their futile amendment approach such activists mistakenly insist there is “no question that an amendment will be needed.” They do not know or care that it would be a counter-productive waste of time to confirm, by constitutional amendment, the validity of general powers of Congress which have never been seriously questioned on constitutional grounds and only recently exalted by the defender of plutocracy himself, Chief Justice Roberts. Presumably at the behest of such mistaken activists, Bernie Sanders has proposed an amendment that does include such a provision that risks not just wasteful but also counterproductive results.
Given the uninformed quality of the constitutional amendments that have been proposed on this subject by Democrats and their professional activist allies, one can easily imagine that an amendment for this purpose, although unnecessary, could well do more harm than good. The close parsing by a hostile Roberts Court of any particular new constitutional text on this subject could be turned on its head to reduce Congress’ current unrestricted authority to mandate all the disclosure of money in politics they may desire.
Clinton’s mention of the amendment should be no surprise. The constitutional amendment idea has been used as a theatrical prop to give cover to Democrats who are mired in the corrupt system as deeply as Republicans. Republicans embrace plutocracy as some surreal 21st century manifestation of the founders concept of “freedom of speech,” a notion formed long before there was a mass broadcast media to be bought for the political propaganda of marketing specialists. Accepting the Republican’s game, Democrats misleadingly propagate the idea that a constitutional amendment is the sole means by which they could limit money in politics. The resulting stalemate from this diversion absolves Democrats’ failure to advance far more effective and available legislative measures. By such deceit about their support for a futile amendment, a majority of Senate Democrats in the 113th Congress were empowered to vote on behalf of Wall Street in December 2014 to increase, by an order of magnitude, the money that plutocrats can give to buy political parties. Democratic support for the “CRomnibus” Act betrayed the notion that Democrats’ professed commitment to “campaign finance reform” meant that they would seek laws mandating less, not considerably more, money in politics. But the betrayal met with little, if any, protest from their activist allies who keep their eyes safely diverted to the futile amendment approach that would not even have stopped Congress from increasing money in politics as they did in 2014 even if it had been adopted.
Amendment advocacy has served to divert attention from corrupt Democrats for five years. The eventual, and inevitable, collapse, on September 11, 2014, of the Democrats anti-”Citizens United” constitutional amendment theatrics caused those professional activists who got the memo to pivot to a new advertising slogan for 2015. Their new advertising campaign promotes disclosure of “Dark Money,” while attempting to make that slogan sound even worse than their “Citizens United” soundbite. This latest piecemeal fad by non-profit fundraisers for what is actually a much reduced new demand ignores Justice Elena Kagan’s koanic axiom: “Simple disclosure fails to prevent shady dealing…. So the State remains afflicted with corruption.” But it serves Clinton’s straddle between disclosure and amendment.
The recent solicitations from political non-profits have reduced expectations so far as to ask that you send them money to help eliminate Dark Money electioneering by government contractors. This is a reform Obama could accomplish on his own, as a matter of seeing that the law are executed, and should have long ago when the subject first arose in 2011. The activists scrambled on board after the New York Times recently approved this approach. This reform would, they say, “unmask major corporate political donors with a simple executive order.” Of all the plutocrats and their corporate agents who make political investments, this reform would only reach the subset of government contractors. Instead of demanding mere disclosure of political investments from government contractors, activists should at the very least demand policies for this subset that would totally abolish political kickbacks from the procurement system. Their demand should be for strengthening and robust enforcement of — while disqualifying any federal contractor that “directly or indirectly … make[s] any contribution …to any person for any political purpose or use” in violation of — 2 U.S. Code § 441c (“Contributions by government contractors”). Demanding mere disclosure in this context, as it usually does, serves to divert attention from more meaningful reform.
Even this anti-corruption best-practice no-brainer for disclosure, let alone disqualifying firms with a history of conflict of interest electioneering expenditures, has been too much for a Democratic President. Obama uses highly contingent and distancing language whenever he mentions money in politics, such as his statement (emphasis added) about: the “need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight on the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.”
The multiple italicized contingencies Obama employed indicate that he understood an amendment to be little more than political theatrics. By mentioning Citizens United, not Buckley, and Super-PACs instead of the whole corrupt system, he slices and dices the problem into its manageable but piecemeal soundbites. As a former constitutional law lecturer and record-setting fundraiser, Obama must know that the independent corporate electioneering legalized by Citizens United had very little to do with Super-Pacs, which are overwhelmingly funded by a handful of rich individuals and their non-profit proxies, with very little (only 12%) coming from for-profit corporations. Moreover Super-Pacs already have adequate spotlights on them from a largely outraged public. If in any event the “amendment process” is expected by him to “fall short,” then exactly what is the “change” that Pres. Obama believes can be obtained by “pressure” that might arise from this failure?
Failure due to misdirection usually depletes energy, causes frustration, and alienates voters, which only relieves the “pressure” on politicians. But Obama presumably knows that. His latest tepid statement, sounding like a bystander to the process of policy making, was that he would “love to see some constitutional process that would allow us to actually regulate campaign spending the way we used to, and maybe even improve it.” This could mean almost anything while committing Obama to nothing. One suspects that Obama’s “love” will not give birth to any effective strategy; nor will Clinton.
By mentioning a constitutional amendment without endorsing anything specific Clinton is doing little more than what Obama and his party has done. In formulating her disclosure pillar, Clinton adopted similar language to, while cleverly promising considerably less than, the commitment made in the 2012 Democratic Party platform: “We support campaign finance reform, by constitutional amendment if necessary.” The rubric of “campaign finance reform” could include disclosure of “unaccountable” money as one tactic. But that would need to be accompanied by a more comprehensive legislative package to accomplish any actual “reform.”
By mentioning a constitutional amendment in this context, although the inadequacy of disclosure laws has nothing to do with the text of the Constitution, Clinton not only blows the dog-whistle for those diverted to that futile approach by professional activists for the past five years, but also prepares a convenient exit for herself from even the truncated “dark money” issue. As one commenter observed, she can “endorse the concept without too many expectations about personally making an amendment happen.” A president has no formal role in adopting an amendment so it serves to shift responsibility for the issue away from her, as it has done for Obama.
Clinton should be asked to disclose her legislative plan, since in fact no amendment is necessary, whether to force disclosures of money in politics, or to enact far more robust prohibitions than any amount of disclosure could possibly accomplish. It is those other, strategic legislative solutions for banning money from politics, such as strengthened conflict of interest recusal rules, and Exceptions Clause or Eleventh Amendment jurisdiction-stripping, that Clinton, along with the Democratic Party, can be safely expected to avoid at all costs.
Democrats using effective strategy to get money out of politics would be even less likely than landing a gyrocopter on the White House lawn by a “showman patriot” would dramatize the issue effectively in the complicit mass media. The Wall Street masters would not consent to any effective strategy to restrain their plutocracy.
Rob Hager is a public interest litigator who filed an amicus brief in the Montana sequel to Citizens United and has worked as an international consultant on anti-corruption policy and legislation.
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Lies are Unbekoming | January 25, 2026
The waiting room is clean. The receptionist is polite. The forms ask reasonable questions. Nothing in the physical environment suggests danger. The magazines are current. The hand sanitizer dispenser works. Someone has chosen calming colors for the walls.
A pregnant woman sits in a chair designed for her comfort. She has been told to be here. Not ordered—no one orders. Recommended. Strongly recommended. Everyone does this. Her mother did this. Her friends did this. The women in her prenatal group compare notes about their appointments the way they compare notes about nursery furniture. Which provider did you choose? What tests have you had? The questions assume the answers. The answers assume the questions.
She will be offered things today. Offered is the word used. The offers will come with information sheets that list risks and benefits in tabular form. She will sign consent documents. Everything will be voluntary in the legal sense. No one will hold her down. No one will threaten her. She will choose, and her choices will feel like choices, and she will leave feeling she has done the responsible thing.
What she will not feel is the weight of what has been arranged before she arrived. … continue
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