Many people like olives because they are delicious and produce wonderful oil. They were originally cultivated in Syria, Palestine and Crete and there is evidence that some existing trees are 2,000 years old, which is amazing.
But there aren’t any 2,000 year-old olive trees in Palestine nowadays. Indeed there are very few left in the Palestinian lands that have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Since then, the Israelis have destroyed 800,000 Palestinian olive trees and last week the Israeli army cut down another 52 next to a village whose farmers are being driven into poverty by yet another vicious act of Israeli malice. The destruction was ignored by western politicians who say they want a solution to what US Secretary of State Kerry calls a “puzzle.”
Yes, it’s a puzzle. But even Kerry, in an off-guard truthful moment, ventured to say that if there is no two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state with second-class citizens.”
That was welcome acknowledgement of Israel’s arrogance (although of course he promptly withdrew it after shrieks of protest), but he ignored that Israel is already an apartheid state where Palestinians are non-citizens.
There is nowhere else in the world, apart from Britain’s mediaeval tribal areas of Northern Ireland, where twenty-foot high concrete barriers separate peoples of different religions. But the Israelis go further, because their barricades exemplify apartheid which is ‘a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.’
Israel has 400 miles of walls separating Jews from Arabs, and one of its latest extensions involves a village near Bethlehem which grows olives in “unique terraced hills built by hand over millennia.” Its irrigation system was built by the Romans and has lasted 2,000 years, but it’s going to be destroyed by the Israelis. And nobody will do anything about it.
There will not be a squeak of protest from any western country, least of all the United States whose entire legislative system is controlled by the Israeli lobby. AIPAC, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, calls the shots in Washington and has given money to almost every senator and member of the House of Representatives. And why would it do that?
All decent people are in favour of donating to charities. But legislators of the US Congress are not charities. When they are given money by an organisation of any sort they are expected to produce results that are favourable to the donor – and in the case of AIPAC they certainly do that. President Obama isn’t a charity, either, and his speech to the 2011 AIPAC forum was grovelling and obsequious.
Obama declared that “I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland . . . [and] when an effort was made to insert the United Nations into matters that should be resolved through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, we vetoed it (applause)” in what was probably the most pathetically sycophantic speech ever made by a US president. But he needed AIPAC support for his re-election campaign the following year.
Two days after Obama’s rejection of the Palestinian people the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressed both houses of Congress in a triumphant diatribe denying the rights of Palestinians. And for this he received adulation on a scale hitherto reserved for international figures of illustrious achievement.
Since the French hero of the Revolutionary War, the Marquis de Lafayette, gave the first speech by a foreigner in 1824, dignitaries from each of France and Britain have spoken at eight joint meetings of Congress, the most by any countries (and Churchill’s three orations were historic), but there haven’t been any French or British luminaries welcomed in recent years. Guess which country has been honoured by the next highest number of appearances in front of the legislators of the world’s greatest democracy.
Washington has laid out the Congress carpet seven times for Israeli politicians, and Netanyahu leads with two imperial appearances. After his last triumphant performance it was reported that “President Obama got 25 standing ovations from Congress during his 2011 State of the Union address. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got 29 today.”
It is barely credible that this brutally racist prime minister could receive such adulation from the massed representatives of a nation having a Declaration of Independence declaring that “unalienable Rights” include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Life? – A letter in Britain’s medical journal The Lancet notes that “the life expectancy table ranks healthy life expectancy at birth for men in Israel at ninth worldwide, compared with 86th for men in the neighbouring Occupied Palestinian Territory. Corresponding ranks for women are 12th and 97th, respectively. This astonishing gap highlights yet again the apartheid-like regime that is in place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
There is little liberty and no happiness for Palestinians in their own country, because almost all Arab lands have been seized by the Jews. Yet Israel’s persecution of Palestinians meets with the wholehearted support of America’s government whose taxpayers give Israel over three billion dollars a year.
The bankrolled legislators of America’s Congress contemptuously ignore UN Security Council Resolutions about Palestinian rights. In 1979, in spite of the US, the council declared that “the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.” But resolutions mean nothing to Congress if they are critical of Israel. Money is much more important. Since then, Washington has vetoed 42 council resolutions intended to curb or criticise Israeli excesses.
While the recent talks between Israel and Palestine were going on the Israelis approved the illegal building of another 13,851 new settlement houses on Palestinian land. So of course the talks collapsed. They were never meant to succeed by either Washington or Tel Aviv.
You would think that Israelis might want to come to some sort of equitable arrangement with the Palestinians. But they don’t and won’t. Washington’s unconditional support means Israel will carry on rejecting olive branches of peace and continue destroying the olive groves of Palestine.
May 15, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | AIPAC, Israel, Obama, Palestine, Zionism |
4 Comments
When US First Lady Michelle Obama appeared in a picture supporting the 270 schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria, she was praised for taking a stand against Boko Haram. But others quickly subverted her message and turned it into an anti-drone campaign.
Michelle Obama appeared in the viral image last week, holding up a sign that said “#Bring Back Our Girls.” The hashtag quickly spread online, hitting home with an online audience that had read about the tragic kidnapping of the schoolgirls by a radical Islamist group.
Her contribution to the ongoing conversation did not go unnoticed by critics of President Obama. Twitter users either photoshopped the image or held their own sign, posting pictures that raised various concerns on topics ranging from American conservatism, sports, and drones.
The Britain-based non-profit Bureau of Investigative Journalism announced earlier this year that, in the five years that Obama has been in office, at least 2,400 people across the Middle East have been killed by drones. … Full article
May 14, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | Obama, United States |
1 Comment
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
— Voltaire, 1694-1778
It is impossible not to gain the impression that the criteria for being awarded prestigious honors for services to “peace”, “humanity” or “distinguished public service” is a candidate who is duplicitous, vicious, stone-hearted and above all prepared to kill, plan killings or rejoice in killing on an industrial scale as brutally as can be devised.
Moments after being informed of the horrific death of Libyan Leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “Wow!” then unforgettably and chillingly laughed, telling a television crew: “We came, we saw, he died.” Asked if her recent visit to Libya might have had anything to do with his death, she “… rolled her eyes” and said “I’m sure it did.”
Six months later, in April 2012, Clinton received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service. The following month she received the Champions for Change Award for Leadership, and in May 2013, the inaugural Warren Christopher Public Service Award.
Madeleine Albright’s comment, when US Ambassador to the UN, on “60 Minutes” (12th May 1996) that the price of the lives of half a million children who had died as a result of US-driven UN sanctions on Iraq, was: “a hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it”, was no bar to her receiving, under two years later, the 1998 International Rescue Committee’s Freedom Award: “For extraordinary contributions to the cause of … human freedom … The list of those who have received the Freedom Award reveals the remarkable ability of an individual to shape history and change for the better a world moving toward freedom for all.”
The “freedom of the grave” comes to mind.
Other recipients have been John McCain (2001) George H.W. Bush, whose regime vowed to “reduce Iraq to a pre-industrial age” – and did, in 1991 – and Bill Clinton whose Presidency (1993-2001) in addition to several massive bombings and unending daily ones (all illegal) oversaw, manipulated and pressured the UN to continue to implement the most draconian embargo in the organization’s history and ensure that children, the sick, went on dying in ever greater numbers every year of his Presidency. They were both honored in 2005.
In 2008 the Award went to Kofi Annan, during whose tenure as UN Secretary General (1997 – 2006) involved Iraq’s tragedy and “thirty four major armed conflicts.”
Annan was entrusted with oversight of international commitment to the UN’s fine founding pledge by: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war … to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person …” In the event he merely bleated mildly from time to time that some humanitarian holocaust was “regrettable”, “unfortunate” or that he was “concerned.”
Moreover, Kofi Annan’s son, Kojo, had profited from the pitiful UN-Iraq “Oil for Food” deal as children were dying, with former US Federal Reserve Chairman saying, on behalf of a Committee set up to investigate: “Our assignment has been to look for mis- or mal-administration in the oil-for-food programme, and for evidence of corruption within the U.N. organization and by contractors. Unhappily, we found both.”
These are minimal examples of how political pigs ears become polished silk purses. Now President Obama who, as Sherwood Ross has written, “has already bombed six countries (Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq) is risking a possible escalation of the Ukraine crisis he nurtured, into World War III against Russia”, was, on 7th May, awarded the 2014 Ambassador for Humanity Award by the Shoah Foundation.
The Shoah Foundation was established by Steven Spielberg to document the Holocaust, but has since expanded to document other modern genocides. Their new Ambassador’s actions should keep them occupied for a good while.
President Obama’s commitment to democracy and human rights has long been felt”, Spielberg said in a statement. “As a constitutional scholar and as President, his interest in expanding justice and opportunity and all is remarkably evident.”
The timing of the Award may outdo even the other more farcical honors, since, as Ross points out, according to Russian expert, Professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois:
Obama now has broken the promise President George H.W. Bush gave to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that if he agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would move no farther east, toward Russia’s boundaries. The Obama administration and NATO are maneuvering humanity into a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis right on the borders of Russia. Can World War III be far behind?
Further, NATO is planning larger number of combat forces in Eastern Europe, thus “the dreaded Cold War, with all its staggering cost, with all its immeasurable weight of fear, begins again.”
But even the first year of the Obama Presidency marked a year zero for many. In 2009 at least seven hundred Pakistani civilians were obliterated in drone strikes. Those also killed, accused of terrorism, had no trial, no lawyer, no right of reply. They were simply executed under the US Commander in Chief’s personal policy.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to January of this year:
Since Obama’s inauguration in 2009, the CIA has launched 330 strikes on Pakistan – his predecessor, President George Bush, conducted 51 strikes in four years. And in Yemen, Obama has opened a new front in the secret drone war.
Across Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the Obama administration has launched more than 390 drone strikes (since 23rd January 2009) eight times as many as were launched in the entire Bush presidency. These strikes have killed more than 2,400 people …
In Yemen, under US drones: “Last year saw the highest civilian casualty rate since Obama first hit the country in 2009.”
It is not drones alone. For example, a week to the day after Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:
On December 17 2009, a US Navy submarine launched a cluster bomb-laden cruise missile at a suspected militant camp in al Majala, southern Yemen.
The missile hit a hamlet inhabited by “one of the poorest tribes in Yemen. Shrapnel and fire left at least forty one civilians dead, including at least twenty one children and twelve women – five of whom were pregnant.
In his Nobel acceptance speech he defended the use of force as “not only necessary, but morally justified.” A constitutional lawyer who has, figuratively, burned his law books.
But the President started as he continues. Three days after becoming Ambassador for Humanity, the US announced a “pilot programme” which is sending anti-tank weapons to terrorists in Syria. Lest it be forgotten, these groups have been videoing themselves crucifying, beheading, removing and eating the organs of victims, chopping off hands and dragging people behind moving vehicles. Under the Commander in Chief aka Ambassador for Humanity, the “pilot project” is an experiment trying to establish whether the weapons will “fall into the wrong hands.” Nauseatingly farcical.
Gulag Guantanamo is still open with the untried, condemned to incarceration until time unknown and legally unaccounted for, another pre-2009 election pledge condemned to the trash bin of history.
Iraq’s citizens continue to be bombed with US missiles, under the US proxy Prime Minister.
At home, under this Presidency, the US has the highest first day of life infant mortality rate in the industrialized world, a survey released this week has found.
The US is in the top five countries with the world’s highest execution rates.
In 2011 Pew Research found that “the median black household had about seven per cent of the wealth of its white counterpart, down from nine per cent in 1984, when a Census survey first began tracking this sort of data.”
Change we can believe in?
It has to be wondered whether President Obama pondered on this as he headed to California and his Award ceremony in Air Force One, costing $228,288 per hour.
The prison population of America, at 2.4 million (2013 figures) is just the tip of the iceberg, including “around three thousand children locked up for things that aren’t crimes for adults, ‘such as running away, truancy and incorrigibility.’” See woeful details here.
As this is finished, news comes in of “Obama left alone as agents moonlight”. Shock, horror. Who protects the villagers of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia from the Ambassador for Humanity’s drones?
Perhaps the Nobel Committee could lead the way in ending these outrageous Awards by starting with rescinding a few of their own. It would be a start.
May 14, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Iraq War, Libya, Obama, Pakistan, Shoah Foundation, Somalia, Steven Spielberg, United States, Yemen |
2 Comments
It seems that Seattle has officially passed the $15 baton to San Francisco, and they’re running with it. On May 5th San Francisco had its first public organizing meeting to prepare for a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage to $15. The Labor movement and broader community organizations were well represented, and with them all the potential to achieve a great victory.
The San Francisco $15 proposal is stronger than the Seattle mayor’s version: the time line to get to $15 is shorter, and there are fewer exceptions.
San Francisco companies with more than 100 employees would have until 2016 to raise wages to $15 an hour, but they must lift wages to $13 an hour by next January. Businesses with fewer than 100 employees have until 2017 to raise wages to $15 an hour, but must raise them to $13 an hour by 2015 and $14 by 2016.
Polling has already indicated overwhelming support (59 percent) for the initiative.
The process that San Francisco is using also has other advantages over Seattle’s. The unions and community groups are working as a united front in San Francisco, whereas in Seattle there was constant tension between the socialist city council member Kshama Sawant and her $15 Now group of supporters versus the unions: Sawant wanted a strong version of $15 and several of the unions just wanted a deal, seemingly more interested in working with the mayor towards “consensus” between the unions and the corporations.
In San Francisco “consensus” was thankfully blown to pieces. The ballot initiative process goes over the head of the City Hall corporate politicians, destroying the consensus that San Francisco mayor was desperately seeking between the Chamber of Commerce — representing the giant corporations — and the unions. This has infuriated the 1%.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
“The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce said it was ‘outraged by the preemptive minimum wage ballot measure’ designed by SEIU and its allies.”
This is exactly the kind of outrage that should warm the heart of all working people.
The ballot initiative is also superior because it opens up the doors to wider participation of various community groups, who can mobilize their members to collect signatures, organize rallies, etc., instead of simply having four or five union reps cut a backroom, watered-down deal with the mayor and corporations.
Which begs the question: why don’t unions and community groups work together on inspiring ballot initiatives more often? Half the states in the country and many municipalities have the legal authority to evoke this brand of direct democracy, yet it’s rarely done.
The answer is, sadly, that this weapon is rarely used in an inspirational way because of the “partnership” between unions and the Democratic Party. The Democrats are adversaries of anything potentially harmful to the big corporations, which any economic measure that inspires working people will inevitably be.
This is why — as Obama’s presidency proved yet again — the Democratic Party is where hope goes to die.
Which makes the events in San Francisco all the more important: the $15 dollar initiative is an example of the unions making a big break, in practice, from the Democrats, which hopefully others around the nation will follow.
And follow they must, since it would be suicide for the national labor movement to sit idly as the fight for $15 snowballs. Union and community groups should be working together across the country for similar ballot initiatives wherever possible.
For those states without ballot initiatives, $15 can still be used as a rallying cry and a mobilizing force for change. Wherever the Democratic Party blocks this process, unions should come together and form a labor party. Working people are tired of excuses.
The fight for $15 also gives a boost to organizing new workers into unions as well. For example, Wal-Mart workers would love to make $15 an hour and the labor movement has been trying in vain to organize them for years. The slogan “$15 and a union” would resonate far better with Wal-Mart workers than anything the unions have yet put forth.
There are also many other unions that have already-organized workers who don’t make $15, and now they can have the confidence to demand $15 at the bargaining table, knowing full well that the broader community will come to their aid.
The $15 demand is especially important because it’s the first time in decades that the labor movement is going on the offensive. This is crucial. Three decades of playing defense — and playing it poorly — has had a demoralizing effect on the entire working class. A big offensive victory opens the doors wide to new possibilities and new horizons. It boosts confidence. One year ago $15 seemed like a fantasy; in five years we’ll hopefully be looking back at $15 with nostalgia, having achieved many other offensive victories.
The possibilities for unions and community groups to organize around $15 are endless. And if other unions don’t follow the example of the San Francisco unions and community groups, they’ll be acting as willing participants to the ongoing corporate onslaught. Not fighting back is no longer an option.
Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action. He can be reached at portland@workerscompass.org
May 14, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism | Democratic Party, Wal-Mart |
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A chorus of outraged public opinion demands that the “international community” and the Nigerian military “Do something!” about the abduction by Boko Haram of 280 teenage girls. It is difficult to fault the average U.S. consumer of packaged “news” products for knowing next to nothing about what the Nigerian army has actually been “doing” to suppress the Muslim fundamentalist rebels since, as senior columnist Margaret Kimberley pointed out in these pages, last week, the three U.S. broadcast networks carried “not a single television news story about Boko Haram” in all of 2013. (Nor did the misinformation corporations provide a nanosecond of coverage of the bloodshed in the Central African Republic, where thousands died and a million were made homeless by communal fighting over the past year.) But, that doesn’t mean the Nigerian army hasn’t been bombing, strafing, and indiscriminately slaughtering thousands of, mainly, young men in the country’s mostly Muslim north.
The newly aware U.S. public may or may not be screaming for blood, but rivers of blood have already flowed in the region. Those Americans who read – which, presumably, includes First Lady Michelle Obama, who took her husband’s place on radio last weekend to pledge U.S. help in the hunt for the girls – would have learned in the New York Times of the army’s savage offensive near the Niger border, last May and June. In the town of Bosso, the Nigerian army killed hundreds of young men in traditional Muslim garb “Without Asking Who They Are,” according to the NYT headline. “They don’t ask any questions,” said a witness who later fled for his life, like thousands of others. “When they see young men in traditional robes, they shoot them on the spot,” said a student. “They catch many of the others and take them away, and we don’t hear from them again.”
The Times’ Adam Nossiter interviewed many refugees from the army’s “all-out land and air campaign to crush the Boko Haram insurgency.” He reported:
“All spoke of a climate of terror that had pushed them, in the thousands, to flee for miles through the harsh and baking semi-desert, sometimes on foot, to Niger. A few blamed Boko Haram — a shadowy, rarely glimpsed presence for most residents — for the violence. But the overwhelming majority blamed the military, saying they had fled their country because of it.”
In just one village, 200 people were killed by the military.
In March of this year, fighters who were assumed to be from Boko Haram attacked a barracks and jail in the northern city of Maiduguri. Hundreds of prisoners fled, but 200 youths were rounded up and made to lie on the ground. A witness told the Times: “The soldiers made some calls and a few minutes later they started shooting the people on the ground. I counted 198 people killed at that checkpoint.”
All told, according to Amnesty International, more than 600 people were extra-judicially murdered, “most of them unarmed, escaped detainees, around Maiduguri.” An additional 950 prisoners were killed in the first half of 2013 in detention facilities run by Nigeria’s military Joint Task Force, many at the same barracks in Maiduguri. Amnesty International quotes a senior officer in the Nigerian Army, speaking anonymously: “Hundreds have been killed in detention either by shooting them or by suffocation,” he said. “There are times when people are brought out on a daily basis and killed. About five people, on average, are killed nearly on a daily basis.”
Chibok, where the teenage girls were abducted, is 80 miles from Maiduguri, capital of Borno State.
In 2009, when the Boko Haram had not yet been transformed into a fully armed opposition, the military summarily executed their handcuffed leader and killed at least 1,000 accused members in the states of Borno, Yobe, Kano and Bauchi, many of them apparently simply youths from suspect neighborhoods. A gruesome video shows the military at work. “In the video, a number of unarmed men are seen being made to lie down in the road outside a building before they are shot,” Al Jazeera reports in text accompanying the video. “As one man is brought out to face death, one of the officers can be heard urging his colleague to ‘shoot him in the chest not the head – I want his hat.’”
These are only snapshots of the army’s response to Boko Haram – atrocities that are part of the context of Boko Haram’s ghastly behavior. The military has refused the group’s offer to exchange the kidnapped girls for imprisoned Boko Haram members. (We should not assume that everyone detained as Boko Haram is actually a member – only that all detainees face imminent and arbitrary execution.)
None of the above is meant to tell Boko Haram’s “side” in this grisly story (fundamentalist religious jihadists find no favor at BAR), but to emphasize the Nigerian military’s culpability in the group’s mad trajectory – the same military that many newly-minted “Save Our Girls” activists demand take more decisive action in Borno.
The bush to which the Boko Haram retreated with their captives was already a free-fire zone, where anything that moves is subject to obliteration by government aircraft. Nigerian air forces have now been joined by U.S. surveillance planes operating out of the new U.S. drone base in neighboring Niger, further entrenching AFRICOM/CIA in the continental landscape. Last week it was announced that, for the first time, AFRICOM troops will train a Nigerian ranger battalion in counterinsurgency warfare.
The Chibok abductions have served the same U.S. foreign policy purposes as Joseph Kony sightings in central Africa, which were conjured-up to justify the permanent stationing of U.S Special Forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, the Central African Republic and South Sudan, in 2011, on humanitarian interventionist grounds. (This past March, the U.S. sent 150 more Special Ops troops to the region, claiming to have again spotted Kony, who is said to be deathly ill, holed up with a small band of followers somewhere in the Central African Republic.) The United States (and France and Britain, plus the rest of NATO, if need be) must maintain a deepening and permanent presence in Africa to defend the continent from… Africans.
When the crowd yells that America “Do something!” somewhere in Africa, the U.S. military is likely to already be there.
Barack Obama certainly needs no encouragement to intervention; his presidency is roughly coterminous with AFRICOM’s founding and explosive expansion. Obama broadened the war against Somalia that was launched by George Bush in partnership with the genocidal Ethiopian regime, in 2006 (an invasion that led directly to what the United Nations called “the worst humanitarian crisis is Africa”). He built on Bill Clinton and George Bush’s legacies in the Congo, where U.S. client states Uganda and Rwanda caused the slaughter of 6 million people since 1996 – the greatest genocide of the post War World II era. He welcomed South Sudan as the world’s newest nation – the culmination of a decades-long project of the U.S., Britain and Israel to dismember Africa’s largest country, but which has now fallen into a bloody chaos, as does everything the U.S. touches, these days.
Most relevant to the plight of Chibok’s young women, Obama led “from behind” NATO’s regime change in Libya, removing the anti-jihadist bulwark Muamar Gaddafi (“We came, we saw, he died,” said Hillary Clinton) and destabilizing the whole Sahelian tier of the continent, all the way down to northern Nigeria. As BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka writes in the current issue, “Boko Haram benefited from the destabilization of various countries across the Sahel following the Libya conflict.” The once-“shadowy” group now sported new weapons and vehicles and was clearly better trained and disciplined. In short, the Boko Haram, like other jihadists, had become more dangerous in a post-Gaddafi Africa – thus justifying a larger military presence for the same Americans and (mainly French) Europeans who had brought these convulsions to the region.
If Obama has his way, it will be a very long war – the better to grow AFRICOM – with some very unsavory allies (from both the Nigerian and American perspectives).
Whatever Obama does to deepen the U.S. presence in Nigeria and the rest of the continent, he can count on the Congressional Black Caucus, including its most “progressive” member, Barbara Lee (D-CA), the only member of the U.S. Congress to vote against the invasion of Afghanistan, in 2001. Lee, along with Reps. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and fellow Californian Karen Bass, who is the ranking member on the House Subcommittee on African, gave cart blanch to Obama to “Do something!” in Nigeria. “And so our first command and demand is to use all resources to bring the terrorist thugs to justice,” they said.
A year and a half ago, when then UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s prospects for promotion to top U.S. diplomat were being torpedoed by the Benghazi controversy, a dozen Black congresspersons scurried to her defense. “We will not allow a brilliant public servant’s record to be mugged to cut off her consideration to be secretary of state,” said Washington, DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.
As persons who are presumed to read, Black Caucus members were certainly aware of the messy diplomatic scandal around Rice’s role in suppressing United Nation’s reports on U.S. allies’ Rwanda and Uganda’s genocidal acts against the Congolese people. Of all the high profile politicians from both the corporate parties, Rice – the rabid interventionist – is most intimately implicated in the Congo Holocaust, dating back to the policy’s formulation under Clinton. Apparently, that’s not the part of Rice’s record that counts to Delegate Norton and the rest of the Black Caucus. Genocide against Africans does not move them one bit.
So, why are we to believe that they are really so concerned about the girls of Chibok?
May 14, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Africa, AFRICOM, Barbara Lee, Boko Haram, Congo Holocaust, Congressional Black Caucus, Hillary Clinton, Niger, Nigeria, Obama, Sahel, Somalia, United States |
3 Comments
This is default mode for the Freedom of Information Act.
In a federal FOIA complaint, the ACLU and University of Arizona Professor Derek Bambauer and Associate Professor Jane Yakowitz Bambauer claim that the Department of Homeland Security has failed to respond to requests made in January and February for records that may “shed light on Border Patrol’s extensive but largely opaque interior enforcement operations.”
The professors seek “records related to U.S. Border Patrol’s interior enforcement operations in Tucson and Yuma Sectors, including relevant agency policies, stop data, and complaint records.”
The CBP (Border Patrol) operates far inland these days with the blessing of the DHS. To live in states bordering Mexico is to have your freedom to travel within the country needlessly interrupted by uniformed officers inquiring about your country of origin.
The CBP’s surveillance technology has also wandered much further inland, far past the so-called “Constitution-Free Zone” that extends 100 miles in from the country’s borders. Its drones, which are specifically to be used for border surveillance, have been loaned out to an assortment of federal agencies and local law enforcement.
The CBP has also become a deadlier force, responsible for 27 fatalities in the last three years. This number has increased dramatically, in part because CBP agents seemed to be looking for reasons to open fire — like standing directly in the path of escaping vehicles.
But this isn’t so much about the CBP as it is about the government’s betrayal of the ideals behind the Freedom of Information Act.
“We shouldn’t have to go as far as filing a lawsuit to get these records,” Professor Bambauer said in a statement. “This is public information about a matter of pressing public concern. We cannot allow DHS and Border Patrol to continue operating in our communities without being subject to public scrutiny.”
No, citizens shouldn’t have to file lawsuits just to get the government to turn over responsive records. And, yet, this has become the expected route to freeing information. Nearly every document handed out by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been prompted by a lawsuit. The CBP drone documents mentioned above? Those are also tied to a FOIA lawsuit. Without the court’s prompting, it’s highly unlikely any of the documents the CBP “failed” to turn up during its first FOIA search would ever have been made public.
This is now the standard process for obtaining information from the government, whether at the federal level or below. There are many agencies that handle requests with few problems. But the agencies leaning towards the law enforcement/counterterrorism end of the spectrum are far from compliant. They resist, stall or simply ignore requests, pushing inquiring entities towards the courtroom.
This is completely wrong. A FOIA lawsuit is a remedy. Now, it’s just standard practice. And this goes far past simply unacceptable into sickening territory.
Government agencies are supposed to be accountable to the public that pays for everything they do. The FOIA law is simply a tool of accountability that can be wielded by any citizen. But these agencies have perverted the FOIA system so thoroughly that what was supposed to be a last resort (a lawsuit) is now just another step in the FOIA process.
The DOJ likely has no problem with the DHS, CBP and others blowing off FOIA requests until the judicial system orders them to turn over the requested info. After all, in its ridiculous argument for warrantless cellphone searches, it stated that if people felt the police shouldn’t have had access to their cellphone contents, they could always argue for suppression in court. This is the same mentality. Instead of respecting the limitations set by the Fourth Amendment, the DOJ suggests people should use a remedy (suppression) to hold cops accountable rather than expecting the police to police themselves and avoid violating citizens’ privacy and civil liberties.
These agencies know that not everyone has the time or money to battle for the release of documents, so their exposure is limited should they choose not to comply. It’s extremely hard for a nation’s citizens to hold its government accountable if the government is going to use the citizens’ own money against them.
ACLU, EPIC and the EFF have gone to court time and time again with no greater goal than getting government agencies to comply with a federal law. This ongoing subversion of the FOIA is completely unacceptable. This government is giving the public the finger, letting it know that it will only be accountable when forced to.
May 13, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | Border Patrol, CBP, Constitution-Free Zone, DHS, Freedom of Information Act, Human rights, United States |
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The French government has said that it will go ahead with 1.2 billion euro ($1.6 billion) contract to supply Russia with two Mistral helicopter carriers because cancelling the deal would harm Paris more than Moscow.
In the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, the United States had been pressing France as well as Britain and Germany to take a tougher line against Russia and cancel the Mistral contract.
But France refuses to link the helicopter carrier deal to the US/EU debate over tougher sanctions against Russia.
A French government official travelling with President Francoise Hollande in Azerbaijan Sunday, who asked not be named, told reporters that the contract was too big to cancel and that if France didn’t fulfill the order it would be hit with penalties.
“The Mistrals are not part of the third level of sanctions. They will be delivered. The contract has been paid and there would be financial penalties for not delivering it.
“It would be France that is penalized. It’s too easy to say France has to give up on the sale of the ships. We have done our part,” the official said.
President Hollande also said earlier on Saturday that the contract will go ahead.
“This contract was signed in 2011, it will be carried out. For the moment it is not in question,” President Hollande said on Saturday during a visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s electoral district.
The Russian defense ministry warned Paris in March that it would have to repay the cost of the contract plus additional penalties if it cancelled the deal.
EU foreign ministers met in Brussels Monday and expanded their sanctions over Russia’s stance on the Ukrainian crisis, adding two Crimean companies and 13 people to the bloc’s blacklist, EU diplomats said.
They have threatened a further widening of sanction if the Ukrainian presidential elections do not go ahead on May 25.
US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland expressed concern over the deal on May 8 after US lawmakers had demanded more pressure be put on France to stop the contract.
“We have regularly and consistently expressed our concerns about this sale, even before we had the latest Russian actions, and we will continue to do so,” Nuland told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is due to meet the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in Washington Tuesday and President Barak Obama is expected to raise the issue during a visit to France next month to commemorate the D-Day Normandy landings.
US officials have suggested France could sell the ships to another buyer or sell them without the advanced technology, although it is not at all clear at this late stage who the other buyer could be.
The French deal was Moscow’s first foreign arms purchase since the end of the Cold War and was hailed by then President Nicholas Sarkozy has an important step forward in French-Russian relations. The contract has created some 1,000 jobs in French shipyards.
The first of the two ships, the Vladivostok, is due to be delivered by November this year and the second, called Sevastopol, will arrive in St Petersburg for further fitting out with Russian weapons systems in November 2015 and will join the Pacific fleet in the second half of 2016.
The Mistral can carry up to 16 attack helicopters such as Russia’s Kamov Ka-50/52, more than 40 tanks or 70 motor vehicles and up to 700 troops. The ships for Russia have been modified from the version used by the French navy to operate in northern altitudes and ice covered seas.
The Russian navy will fit the ships with air defense systems and rapid fire artillery guns to allow them to go on combat missions with fewer escort vessels.
May 12, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | Arms, France, Russia, Sanctions |
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Climate change, once considered a problem for the distant future, has moved firmly into the present. Climate change is already affecting the American people. – U.S. NCADAC
The U.S. National Climate Assessment Report was published Tuesday [link]. I’ve read half of the chapters (at the beginning and end), skimming the ones in the middle.
My main conclusion from reading the report is this: the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless. The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change. Any increase in adverse impacts from extreme weather events or sea level rise is caused by humans. Possible scenarios of future climate change depend only on emissions scenarios that are translated into warming by climate models that produce far more warming than has recently been observed.
Some of the basic underlying climate science and impacts reported is contradictory to the recent IPCC AR5 reports. Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger have written a 134 page critique of a draft of the NCADAC report [link].
Even in the efforts to spin extreme weather events as alarming and caused by humans, Roger Pielke Jr. has tweeted the following quotes from the Report:
- “There has been no universal trend in the overall extent of drought across the continental U.S. since 1900″
- “Other trends in severe storms, including the intensity & frequency of tornadoes, hail, and damaging thunderstorm winds, are uncertain”
- “lack of any clear trend in landfall frequency along the U.S. eastern and Gulf coasts”
- “when averaging over the entire contiguous U.S., there is no overall trend in flood magnitudes”
As a I wrote in a previous post on a draft of the report, the focus should be on the final Chapter 29: Research Agenda, which outlines what we DON’T know. Chapter 28 Adaptation is also pretty good. Chapter 27 Mitigation is also not bad, and can hardly be said to make a strong case for mitigation. Chapter 26 on Decision Support is also ok, with one exception: they assume the only scenarios of future climate are tied to CO2 emissions scenarios.
An interesting feature of the report is Traceable Accounts – for each major conclusion a Traceable Account is given that describes the Key Message Process, Description of evidence base, New information and remaining uncertainties, Assessment of confidence based on evidence. The entertainment value comes in reading the description of very substantial uncertainties, and then seeing ‘very high confidence’. This exercise, while in principle is a good one, in practice only serves to highlight the absurdity of the ‘very high confidence’ levels in this report.
White House
Apparently President Obama is embracing this Report, and the issue of climate change, in a big way, see this WaPo article For President Obama A Renewed Focus On Climate. Motherboard has an interesting article How extreme weather convinced Obama to fight climate change.
In an interesting move, Obama Taps TV Meteorologists to Roll Out New Climate Report, which describes how Obama is giving interviews to some TV weathermen. It will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out, since TV weathermen tend to be pretty skeptical of AGW.
The politics on this are interesting also, see especially these two articles
JC reflections
While there is some useful analysis in the report, it is hidden behind a false premise that any change in the 20th century has been caused by AGW. Worse yet is the spin being put on this by the Obama administration. The Washington Post asks the following question: Does National Climate Assessment lack necessary nuance? In a word, YES.
The failure to imagine future extreme events and climate scenarios, other than those that are driven by CO2 emissions and simulated by deficient climate models, has the potential to increase our vulnerability to future climate surprises (see my recent presentation on this Generating possibility distributions of scenarios for regional climate change). As an example, the Report highlights the shrinking of winter ice in the Great Lakes: presently, in May, Lake Superior is 30% covered by ice, which is apparently unprecedented in the historical record.
The big question is whether the big push by the White House on climate change will be able to compete with this new interview with Monica Lewinsky :)
May 7, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | Obama, United States |
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Moscow believes that the US has intensified its effort to create a Europe-based anti-missile shield and is increasingly certain that it is targeting Russia. If the situation deteriorates, US-Russia nuclear reduction agreements may be at risk.
Russian concerns over the ABM shield, which the US is building in Eastern Europe, claiming that it is meant to stop ballistic missiles from North Korea and Iran, were voiced Tuesday by both the military and diplomats.
“Unfortunately, I have to state that our partners from NATO have effectively rejected any expert dialogue on the anti-ballistic missile defense issue and substitute it with political slogans,” said Sergey Koshelyev, the head of the Defense Ministry’s department for international military cooperation.
“This situation and the latest statements from the alliance leadership only make us more certain that the ABM system is an anti-Russian capability, which will only grow stronger in time,” he said.
The assertion was echoed by statements from the Foreign Ministry. Russian Deputy FM Sergey Ryabkov said that in Moscow “we feel the symptoms of the work on various segments of the AMD system being intensified… And those symptoms are more frequent that they used to be.”
“This proves our initial concerns that the system in its final form is designed to block not only limited threats, as it was claimed. To a much degree it will be formed, designed and built to try and devalue the Russian strategic nuclear deterrence,” he told RIA Novosti in an interview.
Ryabkov warned that such developments may affect the New START treaty between the US and Russia on nuclear weapons disarmament.
“Fundamental for this treaty is the link between strategic offensive and defensive weapons. So the development of the AMD may in the end affect negatively the prospects of preserving of the treaty,” he said, adding that so far the treaty is strictly observed by both sides and that Moscow has all reasons to believe that its reduction goals will be fulfilled by the 2018 deadline.
The warning comes days after the US rejected the latest Russian proposition on defusing the conflict of the anti-missile system. Russia insists that US should take legally binding obligations not to use the European AMD system to undermine Russia’s nuclear capabilities.
The rejection was expected, especially considering that the US downgraded most lines of cooperation with Russia, except for those beneficial to America, as part of its response to the Ukrainian crisis.
Meanwhile the European AMD system made a new step in mid-April after the US Navy decided to deploy the second generation of the Standard Missile-3 Block IB missile, interceptor projectiles that are part of the antimissile shield.
“The SM-3 Block IB’s completion of initial operational testing last year set the stage for a rapid deployment to theater,” said Taylor W. Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems, the producer of the interceptor missile. “The SM-3’s highly successful test performance gives combatant commanders around the world the confidence they need to counter the growing ballistic missile threat.”
The Obama administration scrapped the Bush-era plans for European AMD and replaced it in 2009 with the so-called Phased Adaptive Approach. While initially viewed as a positive sign of possible compromise, in practice the move resulted in US is continuing to develop the system and stonewalling Russia’s objections.
May 6, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | Europe, Military, Russia, United States, USA |
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The Syrian Opposition Council’s offices in the US will become formal diplomatic missions after receiving approval from the Obama administration on Monday. This comes ahead of high-level talks between the US and opposition leaders in Washington.
The administration first recognized the Syrian Opposition Council as the legitimate representative of Syria in December 2012, but did not suspend the Syrian embassy – representing the Assad government – until this March. The opposition offices were considered informal liaison offices until Monday’s announcement, where they will become “foreign diplomatic missions” under US law, the Associated Press reports.
“This is an important step in the path toward a new Syria, its recognition on the international stage, and its relations with Syrian nationals in the US,” Ahmad al-Jarba, head of the Syrian National Coalition, said in a statement. “The new status provides a diplomatic platform for the Coalition to advance the interests of the Syrian people at all levels. This is a diplomatic blow against Assad’s legitimacy and demonstrates how far the opposition has progressed.”
“It’s a reflection of our partnership with the coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.
Jarba is embarking on his first official visit to Washington as the head of the SOC, CBS News reports. He will be joined by the new chief of staff of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Brigadier General Abdelilah al-Bashir, his office told AFP, but State Department officials would not confirm.
The SOC president made the announcement of the change in status via Twitter.
The move comes as Syrian President Bashar Assad runs for reelection in June. A senior US administration official denounced the election as “a parody of democracy,” AFP reports. Assad’s decision to hold the elections “rings particularly hollow given that the regime is continuing to attack and massacre the very electorate that is purporting to represent,” the official said.
The formal recognition of the diplomatic missions is largely symbolic, as the two offices will not become the embassy in DC or the consulate in New York, AP reports. But the move was a key request by the Syrian opposition, who believe it will give them greater presence and credibility among Syrian expatriates in the US. It will allow the US government to assist the missions with banking and security services.
There are key differences between a foreign diplomatic mission and an embassy or consulate. People working in the missions will not be granted diplomatic immunity, nor will they be allowed access to the assets or properties that belong to the Assad regime, CBS News reports. Even with its embassies suspended, the Assad’s government is still officially recognized by the US.
During his visit, Jarba will meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry and members of the National Security Council and from the Treasury Department, according to CBS News. Al-Bashir is scheduled to meet with US officials “to discuss the supply of sophisticated weapons to the FSA to enable it to change the balance on the ground,” his office told AFP.
Along with the recognition, the administration promised an additional $27 million aid to the opposition council, as well as promising to step up its non-lethal assistance to moderate commanders in the Free Syrian Army, AP reports. The additional aid will bring the total US assistance to opposition groups to $278 million, according to the Guardian.
The coalition is battling against Assad in the country’s civil war, which began with peaceful protests in March 2011. More than 150,000 people have been killed and millions more have been displaced in the three years since fighting began. Assad’s forces are backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants and pro-government militias, and have made recent battlefield gains, AP reports. In February, a second round of peace talks between the opposition, representatives of the Assad government, the US and Russia failed to reach an agreement.
May 6, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite | Obama, Syria, United States |
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The United States State Department, in its infinite wisdom, has once again designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. The newest Country Report on Terrorism, issued on April 30, 2014, includes Cuba in a list of nations that “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism”. The island country in the Caribbean has been so designated since 1982.One reads about the U.S. calling any other nation a ‘sponsor of terrorism’ in shocked disbelief. That the U.S., the greatest purveyor of terrorism on the planet, has the audacity to accuse any other nation of sponsoring terrorism is beyond all credibility.
Just since the beginning of the new millennium, the U.S. has unleashed horrific terrorism on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of at least hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, and the displacement of millions, and is currently sending drones to Yemen and other nations, ostensibly to kill ‘terrorists’, but resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Is this not terrorism?
And what of the U.S.’s continued and unwavering financial support of Israeli terrorism against the Palestinians? Not only does the U.S. finance that apartheid regime, it blocks any attempt by the international community to put a halt to it.
So 1982 is the year that the U.S. first decided that Cuba was a state sponsor of terrorism. This, despite U.S. antagonism toward that country since 1959, when the repressive and widely hated, U.S.-supported regime of Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by a popular resistance movement, led by the young leftist, Fidel Castro. At that time, the U.S. controlled 80% of Cuban utilities, 90% of its mines and cattle ranches, and nearly all of its oil refineries. No wonder Mr. Castro has incurred the wrath of the U.S. since then: when the American bottom line is threatened, no efforts are too great to protect it.
And what has the U.S., that shining beacon of peace, freedom and democracy, been doing on the world stage since 1982, when it first singled out Cuba as a terrorist state? It has either invaded, or covertly or overtly worked for the overthrow of the governments of the following countries, sometimes on multiple occasions, and sometimes constantly:
Cuba
Nicaragua
Angola
Philippines
Iraq
Iran
Venezuela
Palestine
Afghanistan
Somalia
Haiti
If one were to go back just to the middle of the twentieth century, these countries could be added to the list:
Syria
Guatemala
Tibet
Indonesia
Democratic Republic of the Congo
South Vietnam
Brazil
Ghana
Chile
Turkey
Poland
Korea
El Salvador
Grenada
And what of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, including waterboarding, which the United Nations and every civilized country in the world, except for the U.S., condemns? By any but U.S. standards, these are acts of terrorism.
And while we’re talking about Cuba, let’s not forget Guantanamo, the U.S.’s, Cuban-based torture chamber. And the U.S. policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’, the practice of kidnapping suspected terrorists and sending them to foreign countries where prohibitions against torture don’t exist, can only be seen as terrorism.
So while the U.S. wages war, tortures political prisoners, holds prisoners for years without any concept of due process, destabilizes democratically-elected governments which displease it, and finances governments with long records of the most shocking human rights abuses, it actually has the nerve to accuse another country of supporting terrorism.
The Cuban response to this designation is milder than one might expect. A statement from that country’s foreign ministry said that Cuba “… energetically rejects the manipulation of a matter as sensitive as international terrorism by turning it into an instrument of policy against Cuba and it demands that our country be definitively excluded from this spurious, unilateral and arbitrary list.”
So what are the specific reasons the U.S. has for continuing to designate Cuba a sponsor of terrorism? It hardly matters, considering the U.S.’s own ongoing, horrific terrorist activities around the globe, but let’s note them anyway.
* Past support for the Basque separatist group ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ( Basque Homeland and Freedom), and
* Support for Colombia’s FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels.
Yet the report concedes that Cuban ties to ETA ‘have become more distant’, and it points out that Cuba is hosting talks between the Colombian government and the FARC in Havana.
There are, of course, opposing views for why the U.S. actually has so designated Cuba:
Said Mauricio Claver-Carone, of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, an influential lobby group in Washington: Cuba “fails to meet the statutory criteria for being removed” (whatever that is).
Alana Tummino, director of policy at the Americas Society/Council for the Americas in New York, had a different view: “Sadly, unless the State Department has more evidence than it’s providing, it appears that political motivations have once again driven this determination.”
Can there be any doubt that political motivations are, in fact, behind the U.S.’s continuation of a policy that makes no logical sense? For nearly sixty years, the U.S. has embargoed, boycotted, sanctioned, blockaded and invaded Cuba, all because of ongoing resentment against the takeover by the government by Cubans from the Americans. The electoral vote in Florida is usually vital in presidential elections, and the importance of the Cuban-American voting bloc, although diminishing, is still worth courting. So such considerations as human rights, justice and statesmanship have no role in policy-making, when the goal is always re-election.
One looks in vain for any substantive change to U.S. policy towards Cuba.
Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Dill Press).
May 3, 2014
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | Cuba, Latin America, United States |
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When US First Lady Michelle Obama appeared in a picture supporting the 270 schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria, she was praised for taking a stand against Boko Haram. But others quickly subverted her message and turned it into an anti-drone campaign.
Aletho News 