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US Hypocrisy’s Face at the UN – Samantha Power

International School in Even Yehuda, Israel, on February 15, 2016. (photo: YouTube)

International School in Even Yehuda, Israel, on February 15, 2016. (photo: YouTube)
By William Boardman | Reader Supported News | October 30, 2016

What is so remarkable and troubling about the presentation we’ve heard today is that what Russia really wants from the U.N. is credit. Congratulations, Russia, you’ve stopped, for a couple days, from using incendiary weapons. Thank you for not using cluster bombs in civilian areas. Thank you for staying the hand of brutality with regard to bunker buster weapons. You don’t get congratulations and get credit for not committing war crimes for a day or a week. – Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN, October 26, 2016

Samantha Power is the face of American diplomacy at the UN, where she gives ardent voice to American hypocrisy, deceit, intellectual dishonesty, and mockery of the rest of the world. Appalling as her performance has been, her portrayal is accurate, right down to her denial-laden confidence in American exceptionalism.

Power’s comment above came in the midst of a discussion of the carnage in Syria, a discussion without substance or pity, without a care for ending the killing. Her tone and content were in sharp, ugly contrast to the report of UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien addressing the Security Council about the layered wars in Syria that began with peaceful protests early in 2011:

Each month, I have come before you and presented an ever-worsening record of destruction and atrocity, grimly cataloguing the systematic destruction of a country and its people. While my job is to relay to you the facts, I cannot help but be incandescent with rage. Month after month, worse and worse, and nothing is actually happening to stop the war, stop the suffering.

Stephen O’Brien is “incandescent with rage” at the outrage that is Syria, and the perhaps greater outrage of inaction by the Security Council as a body as well as its individual states. O’Brien bears witness to destruction and atrocity that the council cannot stop and to which its member states contribute. They do not express rage, incandescent or otherwise; they express the snide posturing of politics and tactical advantage.

Vitaly Churkin, the Russian Federation’s ambassador to the UN, said O’Brien had delivered a sermon, not an objective report. Churkin said that the Russian Federation continued to negotiate with armed groups, continued to deliver humanitarian aid by the ton, and continued the eight-day-old bombing pause. Churkin said Aleppo was worse because the Al Nusra Front had not yet fulfilled its promise to separate from more moderate opposition forces. Churkin said that negotiation demands were constantly changing, that fighters used civilians as human shields, that a political solution should remain the first priority, and that New Zealand should be thanked for working to build a consensus among the members to end the fighting.

The American response is as heartbreaking as ever:

What is so remarkable and troubling about the presentation we’ve heard today is that what Russia really wants from the U.N. is credit.

Samantha Power responded to the Russian assertion of facts not with rebuttal, but with sarcasm, mockery, and pettiness. Hers is an essentially ad hominem response that allows no credit for a bombing halt of any duration. And no wonder. Power speaks for a country that bombs others more or less at will for as long as it likes. The US has bombed Afghanistan without serious surcease since 2001, and Iraq almost as long. The US continues to participate in the Saudi Arabian coalition’s relentless bombing of Yemen’s hospitals, schools, and funerals, taking part in war crimes as part of a criminal war.

Congratulations, Russia, you’ve stopped, for a couple days, from using incendiary weapons.

Mockingly, the ambassador from the country of military shock and awe acts as if her hands are clean from decades of devastation visited upon the region. Power acts as if the US aerial destruction brought to bear on defenseless tribes in Afghanistan and Pakistan or defenseless urban civilians in Syria, Iraq and Yemen had never happened. Power has nothing to say about American use of depleted uranium weapons that leave their targets – both people and the land – as radioactive threats to human health for generations.

Thank you for not using cluster bombs in civilian areas. Thank you for staying the hand of brutality with regard to bunker buster weapons.

The US/Saudi assault on Yemen uses cluster bombs in civilian areas, but Samantha Power has no sarcastic objection to that. The US manufactures cluster bombs – banned by most of the rest of the world – to sell to the Saudis to use in civilian areas in Yemen. The US had no hesitation using bunker-busting bombs in laying waste to Iraq.

You don’t get congratulations and get credit for not committing war crimes for a day or a week.

Beyond her heavy-handed mockery, Power offered nothing useful. She might have admitted the constant pattern of American war crimes, especially since 2001, whether torture, kidnapping, imprisonment at dark sites, drone strikes, or any of the other horrific acts of American policy throughout the Middle East since World War II. Being the United States means never having to say you’re sorry, no matter how sorry your human rights record, no matter how sorry your fidelity to international law, and worst of all in the world of power politics, no matter how sorry your actual accomplishments are. No matter how monstrous American behavior becomes, Samantha Power is paid to praise it as the necessary actions of the world’s indispensible nation.

In 2008, when Samantha Power was part of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, she famously called Hillary Clinton a “monster.” So does it take one to know one?

 

 

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

November 4, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Why Haven’t Bill and Hillary Clinton Been Imprisoned?

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By Stephen Lendman | November 4, 2016

They’re not the only members of America’s criminal class. They’re most important because likely electoral-rigging may give them a third co-presidential term – humanity threatened by their empowerment.

They partner in each other’s high crimes – major offenses too serious to ignore, including Nuremberg-level crimes of war of war and against humanity, racketeering, fraud, obstruction of justice, perjury, compromising national security, and influence-selling pay-to-play self-enrichment, among others.

Hillary is legally, ethically, morally and emotionally unfit to serve in any public capacity. Bill is a serial rapist. The Clinton Foundation got millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other rogue states actively supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups – Bill and Hillary largely using the money for self-enrichment, not charitable purposes as claimed.

Veteran Chicago newsman John Kass called for “Democrats (to) ask (Hillary) to step aside,” highlighting “decades of lies and cynicism oozing from Clinton Inc” – saying “(i)t’s obvious the American political system is breaking down… crumbling” in plain sight.

Hillary is under multiple FBI investigations. Volumes of incriminating evidence so far haven’t gotten her indicted – because the system is rigged to prevent it.

The so-called Justice Department is in cahoots with the FBI, the White House and other powerful interests, ones I call dark forces, deciding how the nation is run and by whom.

Abraham Lincoln once said “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Things today are out-of-control. Wars on humanity rage, threatening possible thermonuclear confrontation. Neoliberal harshness enriches the nation’s privileged class at the expense of most others.

Police state injustice targets nonbelievers. Tyranny approaches full-blown. Democracy is pure fantasy, not real.

Another Clinton crime family co-presidency means the best of times for Wall Street, war profiteers and other corporate crooks – a nightmarish scenario for ordinary people everywhere, a doomsday one if Hillary as commander-in-chief of America’s military squeezes the nuclear trigger.

If anointed by fair or foul means, likely the latter, it’s clear what’s coming:

  • greater neoliberal harshness than already – proving Hillary’s people-friendly promises as empty as Obama’s;
  • ending what remains of constitutional governance, freedoms sacrificed for alleged greater security, assuring both are lost; and
  • escalated wars of aggression, possible thermonuclear war on Russia, China and Iran, risking humanity’s survival.

Trump is no peacenik, populist or good guy. He’s not Hillary and that matters. Returning her and husband Bill to power threatens world peace, stability and security more than any other previous time in history – the most important reason to oppose them.

Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.

November 4, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US to the Rest of the World: “We Can’t Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, Because We Rely on Nuclear Weapons.”

By Kevin Martin | CounterPunch | November 4, 2016

Last week, the United Nations took an historic step towards global elimination of nuclear weapons, in voting to begin negotiations next year on a treaty to ban nukes. The U.S. and other nuclear weapon states, other than North Korea, declined to support the resolution, with the U.S. and its allies lobbying hard to defeat it. The contradictions in the official U.S. statement are myriad, but here are just a few.

“How can a state that relies on nuclear weapons for its security possibly join a negotiation meant to stigmatize and eliminate them?” argued Ambassador Robert Wood, the U.S. special representative to the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, “The ban treaty runs the risk of undermining regional security.”

Taking the first sentence, Ambassador Wood actually has it backwards. With its huge conventional military superiority, the U.S. would be much more secure in a world free of nuclear weapons. Instead, nuclear weapons are increasingly relied on by other countries, particularly Russia, as a counterweight to the U.S. conventional advantage (which is why nuclear disarmament is unlikely to happen in a vacuum; U.S. conventional military superiority is an impediment to global denuclearization).

So, other countries are more likely to hang onto their nukes, making the U.S. and the whole world less secure, not more. As for the second sentence about the risk of undermining regional security, Wood did not say which regions he was referring to, probably because he couldn’t plausibly name one. Regional nuclear-free and weapons of mass destruction-free zones, which cover the entire global South, are wildly successful and have helped increase regional security. And wouldn’t the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, and Korean peninsula be much safer if Israel, India, Pakistan, China and North Korea ditched their nukes?

Similarly, Wood’s statement “…while we respect the views of the proponents, we disagree with the practicality of their approach and are concerned with the negative effects of seeking to ban nuclear weapons without consideration of the over-arching international security environment” is a head scratcher. Nuclear-free and WMD-free zones have been very effective and practical, and moreover, the increasingly unstable, insecure and militarized international security environment is a terrific reason to move toward banning nuclear weapons worldwide. And hasn’t U.S. military intervention, particularly in the greater Middle East and Near East Asian regions over the last decade and a half significantly degraded said international security environment?

The following paragraph uttered by Ambassador Wood packs a lot of unwise “conventional wisdom” into a short statement and deserves some critical deconstruction:

“The current challenge to nuclear disarmament is not a lack of legal instruments. The challenges to disarmament are a result of the political, technical and security realities we presently face.  The United States is ready to take additional steps including bilateral reductions with Russia and a treaty ending the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, some states are currently unwilling to engage in further nuclear reductions, and others are increasing their arsenals.”

“The current challenge to nuclear disarmament is not a lack of legal instruments.” That is true. The problem is the U.S. and other nuclear states blowing off, since 1970, their legal obligation under article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to pursue negotiations toward nuclear disarmament. If they were doing this in good faith, last week’s UN vote would never have happened. The Republic of the Marshall Islands courageously stepped up to sue the nuclear weapons states at the International Court of Justice for the failure to uphold article VI. The court recently threw the cases out on procedural grounds, but the Marshalls and their allies will persist with appeals, including in U.S. District Court.

“The challenges to disarmament are a result of the political, technical and security realities we presently face.” Also true, but with a heavy dose of cynical, feigned naivete, as if those realities fell from the sky one day. As the unipolar super power, the world’s leading country politically, economically and militarily, doesn’t the U.S. bear a disproportionate responsibility for the dangerous state of global affairs? Aren’t our “security realities” mostly of our own making through our overly militarized foreign policy, which has earned us enemies and adversaries in so many corners of the globe?

“The United States is ready to take additional steps including bilateral reductions with Russia and a treaty ending the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, some states are currently unwilling to engage in further nuclear reductions, and others are increasing their arsenals.” There is a lot to dissect here. Yes, the Obama Administration did want to negotiate further nuclear cuts with Russia. Regrettably, Russia refused, but it was understandable. Between astonishingly arrogant U.S. post-Cold War triumphalism, NATO expansion eastward to Russia’s borders (violating a pledge not to do so by the first President Bush), vilification not just of Russian President Vladimir Putin but of Russia itself, and the afore-mentioned U.S. conventional superiority (with foreign bases and military allies surrounding Russia, and also China), U.S. interests in further nuclear cuts were thwarted – by U.S. foreign policy. And in terms of increasing arsenals, the U.S. has initiated a 30 year, $1 trillion program to upgrade and overhaul the entire U.S. nuclear weapons complex, from weapons labs to warheads to missiles, planes and submarines, predictably starting a new nuclear arms race, as every other nuclear state has followed suit in announcing plans to “modernize” their own nuclear arsenals.

The phrase that jumps to mind in all of this is “Physician, heal thyself.” Instead of whining about the majority of the world’s countries (123 of the 177 countries voted for the resolution to commence nuclear weapons ban treaty negotiations) being unrealistic, the U.S. needs to cancel its exorbitant, proliferation-inducing nuclear “modernization” plans and get serious about banishing the scourge of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. Joining in, and perhaps even leading, the ban treaty negotiations would be fitting for the only country ever to use nuclear weapons in war.

Kevin Martin is President of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, the country’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization with 200,000 supporters nationwide. www.peace-action.org

November 4, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Admiral Kuznetsov Carrier Group Saved Syria From US Cruise Missile Strikes

Sputnik – 02.11.2016

Moscow’s decision to send a fleet of warships, led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, to the eastern Mediterranean may have saved the Syrian military from getting bombed by the US, according to military expert Vladimir Evseev.

Speaking at a press conference at the Rossiya Segodnya news agency press center in Moscow, Evseev, the deputy director of Russia’s CIS Institute, pointed out that Washington had only recently considered the possibility of attacking Syrian government forces, using the pretext of a UN report which alleged that Damascus had used chemical weapons.

“We recently lived through a very important milestone which many people did not even notice,” the analyst suggested. “Why was the question raised of the Syrian Army’s alleged use of chemical weapons? The stage was being set for [US] ship-based cruise missile strikes. According to some reports, such a decision was in play… [Western] public opinion was actively being prepared for it.”

But the entry of a major Russian flotilla, led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, into the Mediterranean may been the essential element needed to cool the Pentagon’s appetites, Evseev added.

“The presence of our ships [between Algeria and Italy] excludes the possible deployment of a similar NATO naval group in the area. Factually, our ships have closed Syria off. The Russian ships did not appear where they are by accident, and eliminated the possibility of launching cruise missiles from that direction.”

The analyst also recalled that earlier, S-300 systems “were deployed in Tartus” with similar goals in mind, given that they are “capable of addressing not only air-based threats, but ballistic targets as well.”

Last week, the contents of a leaked report submitted to the UN Security Council blamed the Syrian government for a chemical attack in Idlib in 2015. Damascus vehemently denied the charges, citing the terrorists’ own regular use of poison gas. Moscow, meanwhile, stressed that more serious evidence would need to be presented before such serious accusations could be leveled.

The US and NATO allies, already engaged in a campaign to demonize Syria and Russia over the fight for Aleppo, used the report to pile on to other charges that Damascus and Moscow were responsible for ‘war crimes’ in their operation to liberate Syria from armed militants and jihadists.

Commenting on the military situation in Syria, Evseev suggested that together with the liberation of Aleppo, the Syrian military and their Russian allies must make it a priority to surround Nusra Front terrorists in Idlib. “The terrorists must be destroyed, but most likely a process of squeezing them out will take place,” he admitted.

If forced to leave Idlib, “the only place for them to go will be Turkey. And here, I would recommend that our Western partners, who currently advise us how to fight in Aleppo, take a moment to think about what will happen to the Idlib militants who end up in Turkey,” the expert noted. “From here, it’s likely that they can then be expected to pay a visit to Europe. This is what Western nations should be thinking about, instead of putting a spoke in the wheel and doing everything possible to interfere in the operation to liberate Aleppo and other Syrian territories.”

As far as the situation in the city of Aleppo is concerned, Evseev stressed that “if we continue to wait and prolong humanitarian pauses, there will be no people left in Aleppo. Without air support, losses are too high. It’s necessary to free the city quickly, and to think less about the West thinks about it.”

November 2, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

ICC to launch probe into US war crimes in Afghanistan: Report

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Press TV – November 1, 2016

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is preparing to launch an investigation of a range of possible war crimes in Afghanistan, including those committed by US troops, according to a new report.

ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, will seek to initiate an investigation in the coming weeks, according to the Foreign Policy magazine, citing several knowledgeable sources.

The probe will likely be launched after the US presidential election but before the end of the year, multiple sources have indicated.

However, it is not clear whether the ICC would ever bring charges against Americans after the investigation because doing so would require significantly more evidence than the chief prosecutor’s office currently possesses, the report said.

If indeed launched, the move would mark the first time a formal ICC investigation has scrutinized US crimes.

In order to discuss the potential investigation and to express concerns about its scope, US officials recently visited the ICC, an international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands.

The ICC has repeatedly highlighted alleged abuses of detainees by American troops between 2003 and 2005 that it believes have not been adequately addressed by the US government.
This file photo by shows the bodies of several men and a child who witnesses said were killed by a United States Army sergeant in southern Afghanistan. (AP)

“Crimes were allegedly committed with particular cruelty and in a manner that debased the basic human dignity of the victims,” the tribunal noted in a report last year.

The US government has insisted that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over US citizens because Washington never ratified the Rome Statute that established the court in the first place.

Afghanistan is still suffering from insecurity and violence years after the United States and its allies invaded the country in 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror.

In October last year, President Barack Obama announced plans to keep 9,800 US troops in Afghanistan through 2016 and 5,500 in 2017, reneging on his promise to end the war there and bring home most American forces from the Asian country before he leaves office.

November 1, 2016 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

UK bases used for targeting in secret US drone war, documents indicate

Reprieve | October 30, 2016

Personnel on military bases in the UK have been involved in choosing targets for a secret US drone campaign which has killed hundreds of civilians in violation of international law, documents obtained by human rights charity Reprieve indicate.

Job adverts and CVs identified from publicly-available sources show that the US Air Force has employed a “MQ-9 REAPER [drone] ISR Mission Intelligence Coordinator” at RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire; while a Private Military Contractor (PMC) has advertised for an “All Source Analyst – Targeting” to work at the same base.

RAF Molesworth is leased to the US, but the UK Government has refused to answer questions on whether it plays a role in the covert drone campaign – which carries out missile strikes outside of warzones with minimal accountability.

British Ministers have said that “the US does not operate RPAS [drones] from the UK,” but have refused to answer questions on whether bases in the UK play a role in choosing targets and drawing up the US ‘kill list.’

A third job advert from contractor Leidos for someone to provide “FMV [full motion video] intelligence analysis in support of USAFRICOM… and Special Operations Command Africa,” also at Molesworth, indicates that the base may be involved in supporting illegal covert drone strikes in countries such as Somalia, where neither the US nor the UK is publicly at war. Along with the CIA, US Special Operations Command is the main player in the drone programme.

Concerns have been raised over the legality of the US covert drone programme, its lack of transparency, and reports that it has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians. The UN has warned that it may violate international law, and British ministers have refused to be drawn on their view of its legality. President Obama has to date refused even to formally acknowledge that the CIA is carrying out drone strikes, because of the programme’s covert status. A 2014 study by Reprieve found that covert drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan had killed as many as 1,147 unknown people in failed attempts to kill 41 named individuals.

The revelations come on top of documents published recently by The Intercept on the role played by Menwith Hill – another UK/US intelligence base – in identifying targets in Yemen, one of the main theatres in which the covert drone programme operates. One document states that targets at Yemeni internet cafes are “tasked by several target offices at NSA and GCHQ.” The document’s header shows it was copied to the UK, meaning that the British Government must have already been aware of the role its intelligence and bases were playing.

Commenting, Jennifer Gibson, staff attorney at Reprieve said:

“These documents are the strongest evidence yet that the US may be conducting its illegal, secret drone war from bases on British soil. Simply to say that drones are not flown from the UK is missing the point, if it is personnel on British soil that are at the top of the so-called ‘kill chain’ and British agencies who are feeding targets into those lists.

“The US drone programme, conducted in the shadows, has killed hundreds of civilians without any accountability. The British Government has questions to answer over its own involvement in this secret war and how much responsibility it bears for those deaths.”

October 31, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Notorious Bahraini judge appointed to investigate alleged war crimes in Yemen

By Alistair Sloan | MEMO | October 31, 2016

The army officer assigned to investigate alleged Saudi war crimes in Yemen played a key role in the 2011 crackdown on Arab Spring protesters in Bahrain, MEMO can reveal. In the wake of the start of the ongoing 2011 uprising, Bahrain’s military lawyer Colonel Mansour Al-Mansour presided over the First Instance Court of National Safety, a tribunal set up to process the trial and prosecution of hundreds of peaceful protesters and human rights and pro-democracy activists after they took to the streets calling for urgent reform of the tiny Gulf monarchy.

Al-Mansour now acts as legal adviser to the Joint Incident Assessments Team (JIAT), the body set up by the Saudi-led coalition to investigate bombings against civilian targets. He is playing a key role in assessing whether human rights violations have taken place.

Amongst Al-Mansour’s notorious convictions are the so-called “Bahraini Thirteen”, a group of activists, journalists and politicians who alleged torture, including sexual assault and beatings, during their detention. Several media and foreign human rights monitors were barred from observing their trial, the conduct of which drew strong criticism from the United Nations, European Union, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Religious leader Mirza Al-Mahroos, who was convicted by Al-Mansour to fifteen years in prison, said that he was “unable to stand due to the severity of what had happened to me.” This was a reference to the alleged daily torture and beatings during his pre-trial detention; on one occasion, he claimed that an interrogator stuffed shoes into his mouth. “I could not look at [the judges] because of the beatings on my eyes,” he recalled. Al-Mansour, he complained, had failed to respond to complaints of torture when raised.

According to Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, the Director of Advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, Al-Mansour sentenced protesters vindictively on behalf of the Bahraini regime. “Rather than being held accountable,” he told MEMO, “Al-Mansour has been promoted to whitewash the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. His story is a clear marker of the descent of Bahrain and the Gulf further into dictatorship and authoritarianism.”

Others convicted by Al-Mansour include Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, a human rights activist and co-founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, as well as the academic and writer Abduljalil Al-Singace, who was arrested initially on his return from Britain where he attended an event in the House of Lords in parliament in August 2010. Al-Singace was detained for six months before being released at the height of the protests, re-arrested, then sentenced by Al-Mansour to life imprisonment. Both men continue to serve their sentences and have been on several hunger-strikes in protest at their incarceration.

Human Rights Watch called the conduct of the trials “unfair”, characterised by “serious due process violations.” The organisation’s official report concluded that “serious abuses included denying defendants the right to counsel and to present a defence, and failure to investigate credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment during interrogation.” Those on trial included health workers, with one nurse convicted of “destroying moveable property in furtherance of a terrorist purpose” because she allegedly stepped on a photo of the prime minister.

Al-Mansour has since specialised in humanitarian law and attended training sessions from the Bahraini Red Crescent Society and the International Committee for the Red Cross, as well as advising his country’s Shura (Consultative) Council in March, on whether to adopt the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. This includes bans on dangerous unexploded ordinance, incendiary devices and other bombs “deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects.” Before the council approved the accession, Al-Mansour reassured legislators that the convention would not apply to the use of weapons within the kingdom.

The convention is actually a watered-down version of the international treaty on “cluster bombs”; Bahrain currently refuses to sign this. Instead, the government in Manama calls for “explosive ordnance that has been primed, fused, armed or otherwise prepared for use and used in an armed conflict” to be cleared from civilian areas after being dropped, rather than banned outright. The legislation clarifies that such ordinance may have been “fired, dropped, launched or projected, and should have exploded but failed to do so.”

Opting for this diluted version of a cluster bomb ban over an outright prohibition preferred by other countries, the Saudi-led coalition has since been accused of using such munitions in Yemen. This is highly controversial because the “bomblets” often fail to explode.

As concerns have mounted internationally about alleged war crimes committed by the coalition air forces in Yemen, Al-Mansour has played a prominent role in playing down the allegations to local, regional and international media. He appeared in media briefings conducted in Riyadh while wearing civilian clothing.

In August, Al-Mansour claimed that a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital hit by coalition air strikes had been used as a base by Houthi militias. MSF refuted the story, saying that the tented clinic had been set up in an empty field in a residential neighbourhood where many internally displaced people had gathered, noting there had been no air strike, nor any fighting in the area, for several months. The GPS coordinates of the MSF medical facilities had also been shared with the Saudis on the morning of the attack. All six of the incidents investigated by JIAT found no wrong-doing on the part of the coalition. MSF has since been forced to withdraw from Yemen after several incidents of a similar nature in which, again, there was found to be no coalition wrong-doing.

JIAT has since admitted that a recent coalition attack on a funeral, which Houthi rebels claim killed eighty-two Yemenis and the UN says could have killed up to a hundred and forty, was the result of a commander who failed to obtain permission from his seniors for the strike. “Naturally, these people must be confronted about what led to this mistake,” Al-Mansour said. “They have the right to defend themselves, but if it becomes clear that legal measures should be taken, the coalition forces are concerned with that.” This, remember, is the man assigned to investigate allegations of war crimes in the same country by the same Saudi-led coalition.

October 31, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The U.S. National Bird Is Now a Drone

By David Swanson | Let’s Try Democracy | October 27, 2016

Officially, of course, the national bird of the United States is that half-a-peace-sign that Philadelphia sports fans like to hold up at opposing teams. But unofficially, the film National Bird has it right: the national bird is a killer drone.

Finally, finally, finally, somebody allowed me to see this movie. And finally somebody made this movie. There have been several drone movies worth seeing, most of them fictional drama, and one very much worth avoiding (Eye in the Sky ). But National Bird is raw truth, not entirely unlike what you might fantasize media news reports would be in a magical world in which media outlets gave a damn about human life.

The first half of National Bird is the stories of three participants in the U.S. military’s drone murder program, as told by them. And then, just as you’re starting to think you’ll have to write that old familiar review that praises how well the stories of the victims among the aggressors were told but asks in exasperation whether any of the victims of the actual missiles have any stories, National Bird expands to include just what is so often missing, and even to combine the two narratives in a powerful way.

Heather Linebaugh wanted to protect people, benefit the world, travel, see the world, and use super cool technology. Apparently our society did not explain to her in time what it means to join the military. Now she suffers guilt, anxiety, moral injury, PTSD, sleep disorder, despair, and a sense of responsibility to speak out on behalf of friends, other veterans, who have killed themselves or become too alcoholic to speak for themselves. Linebaugh helped murder people with missiles from drones, and watched them die, and identified body parts or watched loved ones gather up body parts.

Even while still in the Air Force, Linebaugh was on a suicide watch list and had a psychologist recommend moving her to a different sort of job, but the Air Force refused. She has episodes. She sees things. She hears things. But she’s forbidden to discuss her work with friends or even with a therapist who doesn’t have the proper “security clearance.”

We let Daniel down even more than Heather. He says he actually opposed militarism but was homeless and desperate, so he joined the military. We could have given him a house for much less than we paid him to help murder people at Fort Meade.

Lisa Ling worked on a database filled by drone surveillance that compiled information on 121,000 “targets” in two years. Multiply that by a dozen years. With 90% of victims not among the targets, add up how many people would die in the targeting of the whole list. That’d be over 7 million. But it’s not numbers that have poisoned the souls of these three veterans; it’s children and mothers and brothers and uncles lying in pieces on the ground.

Ling travels to Afghanistan to see the place at ground level and to meet with drone victims. She meets a little boy who lost his leg and his 4-year-old brother and his sister and his father. On February 2, 2010, drone “pilots” at Creech Air Base murdered 23 innocent members of one family.

The filmmakers have voices read the written transcript of what the drone operators said to each other before, during, and after sending in the missiles that did the damage. This is worse than Collateral Murder. The people whose job it is to identify children and others who should not be murdered have identified children among the group of people being targeted. The “pilots” at Creech are eager to reject this information and to get on to killing as many people as they can. Their lust for blood drives the decision process. Only after they’ve killed 23 people do they recognize children among the survivors, and the lack of guns.

We see the bodies brought home to bury. Those injured describe their suffering, physical as well as mental. We see people being fitted with artificial legs. We hear Afghans describe their perception of drones. They imagine, just as many Americans may imagine, and just as viewers of Eye in the Sky would imagine, that drone operators have a clear, high resolution view of everything. In fact, they have a view of fuzzy little blobs on a computer screen that looks like it was created in the 1980s.

Linebaugh says there is no way to distinguish the little “civilian” blobs from little “militant” blobs. When Daniel hears President Obama claim that there is always near certainty that no civilians will be killed, Daniel explains that such knowledge is simply not possible. Linebaugh says she was often on the side of the conversation telling the “pilots” at Creech not to murder innocents, but that they always pushed for permission to kill.

Jesselyn Radack, attorney for whistleblowers, says in the film that the FBI told two whistleblowers that a terrorist group had put them on a kill list. She said that the FBI has also contacted Linebaugh’s family and warned her that “terrorists” have been searching for her name online, suggesting that she fix this problem by shutting up. (She had written an op-ed in the Guardian).

The FBI also raids Daniel’s house, arriving with 30 to 50 agents, badges, guns, cameras, and search warrants. They take away his papers, electronics, and phone. They tell him he is under investigation for a possible indictment under the Espionage Act. This is the World War I-era law for targeting foreign enemies that President Obama has made a routine of using to target domestic whistleblowers. While Obama has prosecuted more people under this law than did all previous presidents combined, we probably have no way of knowing how many people have been explicitly threatened with the possibility.

While we should be apologizing to, comforting, and aiding these young people rather than denying them the right to speak to anybody and threatening them with decades in prison, Lisa Ling did manage to find some kindness. Victims of drone strikes in Afghanistan told her that they forgave her. As the film ends, she’s planning another trip to Afghanistan.

October 31, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Film Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The US, NATO and the Pope

By Brian Cloughley | CounterPunch | October 28, 2016

At the branch office of the Pentagon’s US-NATO military alliance in Brussels there is a never-ending whirl of activity and apart from provoking Russia by announcing an aggressive military surge around its borders, its latest achievement was to have Belgium issue “a commemorative stamp depicting the new NATO Headquarters and its distinctive architecture.”

On October 22 a ceremony was held to mark the new stamp, but no details were given about the price of the vast palace which will “enable all Allies to have the space they require and [in which] there is also space for expansion should the need arise.” There is never any mention by US-NATO of the staggering cost overrun that took place, but two years ago Germany’s Der Spiegel revealed that it was more than double the original construction budget, at over a billion euros.

Ten days before the stamp ceremony, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg left the Brussels Palace to visit a more modest one in Italy where he met Pope Francis. After his call, some observers were unkind enough to express surprise that Mr Stoltenberg could spare the time for such an appointment, but all was made clear when it was announced that the meeting took place in the sidelines of his visit to Rome to celebrate the establishment anniversary of the NATO Defense College, an institution that has contributed generously to the Italian economy.

His Holiness the Pope did not of course make a public statement about the meeting, but the NATO publicity machine (the large and remarkably expensive organization that also arranges stamp issue ceremonies) made up for the omission by announcing that he and his illustrious visitor:

discussed global issues of common concern, including the conflicts in Syria and the wider Middle East, the importance of protecting civilian populations from suffering, and the importance of dialogue in international affairs to reduce tensions. The Secretary General also stressed that climate change could pose a significant security risk.

It is remarkable that His Holiness engaged in such deliberations with the titular head of an enormous nuclear-armed military alliance, and it would be interesting to know if the Pope mentioned that he did not always agree with the policies espoused by Mr Stoltenberg and his directors in Washington, as he averred earlier this year.

It will be recollected that in February 2016 Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church met with Pope Francis in Havana and that Western media headlines included “Pope Francis Handed Putin a Diplomatic Victory” which was as absurd as it was trivial. But even The Economist headline was similarly slanted and amusingly asked “Did the Pope Just Kiss Putin’s Ring?” This set the tone for other comment, but one thrust of its reporting was especially revealing, as it pointed out in shocked — shocked — tones that the Pope had “made clear in his interview before the meeting that on certain issues he agrees with Mr Putin and disagrees with America and its allies.”

How truly dreadful that the Pope dares to be impartial and ventures to disagree with America and its allies about international affairs.

The Economist further noted that “On Libya, where Western powers helped to bring down former dictator Muammar Qaddafi, the pope was explicit: ‘The West ought to be self-critical.’ And he continued that ‘In part, there has been a convergence of analysis between the Holy See and Russia’.” The Economist did not mention the unpalatable fact that the ‘western powers’ — the US-NATO military alliance — bombed and rocketed Libya to a catastrophic shambles, resulting in anarchy and a base for Islamic terrorists.  Perhaps the Pope had taken note of that merciless Blitz, and of the fact that under the dictator Gaddafi the Catholic community in Libya had lived peacefully while now it is suffering gravely.

As recorded by Christian Freedom International, “The upsurge in attacks on Christians in Libya since the Obama/Clinton supported ouster of Gaddafi is of grave concern. CFI condemns these abductions, killings and attacks on Christian property in what is becoming an increasingly inhospitable region for Christians.” Perhaps Pope Francis raised this with the devout Mr Stoltenberg, a graduate of Oslo Cathedral School who was prime minister of Norway when its air force “carried out about 10 percent of the NATO airstrikes in Libya” from March to July 2011.

The news that the Pope has had the temerity and moral realism to “disagree with America and its allies” is not altogether surprising, but the report that “on certain issues he agrees with Mr Putin” must have shaken Mr Stoltenberg, whose fundamental stance is that “Russia is trying to kind of re-establish spheres of influence along its borders and for me this just underlines the importance of strong NATO, of strong partnership with other countries in Europe that are not members of NATO.”

Mr Stoltenberg believes that because Russia wants to establish — or, more accurately, maintain — spheres of influence along its borders then it must be discouraged or even stopped from doing so. This is confrontational, and it is unsurprising that His Holiness has made it clear that the Vatican is not an unconditional supporter of Washington’s Pentagon and its palatial sub-office in Brussels.

Mr Stoltenberg may not have read the address to the US Congress by His Holiness in 2015, when he said ‘We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the golden rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’.’ As reported, ‘The line drew instant, thunderous applause from Democrats, followed with some hesitation by Republicans, a pattern repeated throughout the address.’

In his talk to Congress Pope Francis eschewed the Stoltenberg line that Russia’s desire to maintain peaceful ‘spheres of influence’ around its borders must by definition be wrong and unacceptable and pointed out that ‘there is another temptation which we must especially guard against : the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners.’

As President Putin observed in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera “we are not expanding anywhere; it is NATO infrastructure, including military infrastructure, that is moving towards our borders. Is this a manifestation of our aggression?” No, it is not — except in the eyes of such as the Pentagon and Mr Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg makes many visits round the world, including head-of-state-style attendance at the UN General Assembly in New York, where he had discussions with, among others, Ukraine’s President Poroshenko (“Dear Petro, it’s great to see you again”) and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; and another recent stopover was in the United Arab Emirates on October 19. There, while committing NATO to an Individual Partnership and Cooperation Program he “praised the UAE for its role as a valuable NATO partner in projecting international security and stability: from Kosovo, to Afghanistan to Libya.”

Perhaps Mr Stoltenberg’s meeting with the Pope affected his short-term memory. He ignores the unpalatable facts that in Kosovo, as Freedom House reports, there has been “little progress in strengthening its statehood,” while Afghanistan verges on total anarchy and, as noted above, US-NATO’s war on Libya destroyed the country. These are far from being examples of “security and stability” as Mr Stoltenberg would have us believe them to be, but self-delusion knows no borders.

When Stoltenberg was made head of NATO, President Putin considered him to be a “serious, responsible person”  but warned with prescience that “we’ll see how our relations develop with him in his new position.” Unfortunately that apprehension concerning future developments has been more than justified. During a trip to Washington in April, Stoltenberg told the Washington Post correspondent Karen de Young, that “NATO has to remain an expeditionary alliance, able to deploy forces outside our territory,” which is a plain unvarnished statement of expansionism. The Pope summed it up when he quoted the Bible’s advice to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’ but it is unlikely that Mr Stoltenberg could ever bring himself to abide by such wise advice. More confrontation lies ahead.

Brian Cloughley writes about foreign policy and military affairs. He lives in Voutenay sur Cure, France.

October 30, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US Uranium Weapons Have Been Used in Syria

By John Laforge | CounterPunch | October 28, 2016

This month, the Pentagon admitted it has used uranium weapons in attacks inside Syria — violating its public promise last year that it would not use DU there, and contradicting the claim that US bombing is done in defense of the Syrian people, according to the Int’l Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons.

Like the Pentagon’s past denials of the dangers of the chemical weapon Agent Orange, US military officials still claim publicly that its uranium weapons are not known to cause health problems. Made from waste uranium-238 — left from H-bomb and reactor fuel production — it is called “depleted” uranium (DU) but is only “depleted” of U-235. Ironically, the best evidence that it is dangerously toxic and radioactive — contrary to press pronouncements — comes from the Pentagon itself. A June 1995 report to Congress by the Army’s Environmental Policy Institute (AEPI) concluded: “Depleted uranium is a radioactive waste and, as such, should be deposited in a licensed repository.”

Military studies done in 1979, ‘90, ‘93, ‘95 and ‘97, make clear that uranium weapons are chemically toxic, alpha-radiation-emitting poisons that are a danger to target populations and to invading/occupying US forces alike. In spite of this cautionary written record, the military has been shooting its radioactive waste all over the world: into population centers in Iraq in 1991 (380 tons), in Afghanistan in 2001 (amounts unknown); in Bosnia in 1994-‘95 (five tons); in Kosovo in 1999 (10 tons), in Iraq again in 2003 (170 tons); and now in Syria.

The AEPI report above also says that DU has the potential to generate “significant medical consequences” if it enters the body. The Army’s Office of the Surgeon General, in its Aug. 16, 1993 “Depleted Uranium Safety Training Manual,” says that the expected effects of DU exposure include a possible increase of cancer, and kidney damage. The manual also warns, “When soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust, they incur a potential increase in cancer risk … (lung or bone) and kidney damage.”

The Army’s Mobility Equipment, Research & Development Command reported way back in 1979 that, “Not only the people in the immediate vicinity but also people at distances downwind from the fire are faced with potential over exposure to air-borne uranium dust.” This uranium “dust” is generated when DU shells hit and burn through hard targets like tanks or armored vehicles. The uranium is spread for miles by the wind, contaminating everything is its path including food, water, soil, schools, hospitals, etc., and DU is radioactive forever, or ten times 4.5 billion years, whichever comes first.

In 1990, the Army’s Armaments, Munitions and Chemical Command radiological task group said that DU is a “low level alpha radiation emitter … linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage.” It added that “there is no dose so low that the probability of effect is zero.”

With evidence of its radio-toxicity so clear and redundant, any use of uranium weapons today appears to flaunt the military’s own Field Manual prohibition — absolute and universal — against the use of poison or poisoned weapons.

Historical Disregard Revisited

The military has a long history of deliberately exposing US citizens and others to deadly risks without their knowledge or consent, beginning with the open-air nuclear bomb tests it knew would contaminate vast areas. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chose not to evacuate or even warn downwind populations it knew would be hard-hit by radioactive fallout. (“Fallout risk near atom tests was known, documents show,” New York Times, March 15, 1995) These bomb tests exposed Nevada Test Site workers to levels of radiation that the AEC knew could cause harm, but the agency chose not to reduce workers’ exposures or to even inform them of the risks because doing so would have scandalized and halted the bombing tests. (“Records say workers faced high radiation: Suit contends US used no safeguards,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, Dec. 14, 1989)

Likewise, the government refused to inform some 600,000 H-bomb factory workers that workplace radiation exposures posed serious health risks, although enough was known about radiation to warn them in 1948. (“N-plant workers not told of risks: Report says US arms program exposed many to radiation,” Associated Press, Dec. 19, 1989) Between 1944 and 1974, “medicalized” human radiation experiments were even conducted on unwitting US citizens, 16,000 of them (The Plutonium Files, by Eileen Welsome).

Today, the Pentagon extends this ghastly history into Syria where it is deliberately exposing human beings to weaponized radiation that it knows can cause cancer and other diseases. As if the undeclared, unconstitutional war in Syria weren’t unlawful enough, now add the crime of using poison in violation of military law and the Hague Regulations of War on Land.

It is so easy to prove that DU is poison, that a group of four non-lawyers, myself included, convinced a Minneapolis jury in 2004 that AlliantTechsystems’ manufacture of the shells is unlawful enough to excuse an otherwise illegal trespass; our minor offense was justified in order to prevent the greater harm of DU weapons production. Like torture, the use of such poison in war is always criminal, akin to gas war. This latest US government war crime must be condemned in the harshest terms.

For more information on DU weapons and the global effort to have them banned, see ICBUW.org.

October 29, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

In November We Choose Between War or Peace with Russia

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By John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice | October 29, 2016

Every presidential vote, like every other vote, demands that one set priorities, for it is a rare voter indeed who will agree 100% with a given candidate. And surely in the coming presidential election survival must top the list of priorities. What can be more important than survival of human civilization and perhaps humanity itself?

Here is a brief primer on the subject – suitable for printing out for liberal friends.

No Fly Zone over Syria

“I personally would be advocating now for a no-fly zone (inside Syria)….”

Hillary Clinton interview, October 1, 2015, the day after Russia began air operations over Syria. Clinton has held this position since 2013 at least when she admitted it would “kill a lot of Syrians.”  She has maintained it right up to the final presidential debate when she went “all-in on Syria no-fly zone” as the pro-Clinton Huffington Post headlined it.

*****

“Right now, Senator, for us to control all the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war – against Syria and Russia.  That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford in Congressional testimony on September 22, 2016.  Dunford’s alarm is shared by other “national security” experts and those previously involved in implementing such zones.

“What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria. You’re going to end up in World War Three over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton. … You’re not fighting Syria any more, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right? Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk.”  (Emphasis, JW.)

Donald Trump in Reuters interview on October 25, 2016, headlined “Exclusive – Trump says Clinton policy on Syria would lead to World War Three.”

*****

So there you are. It is not complicated. We have seen Clinton’s actions over 26 and more years. She has not hesitated to kill hundreds of thousands and destroy entire countries. Libya and now Syria are but the latest examples. There is no doubt what she will do once in office.  As Ralph Nader has said, she has never seen a war she did not love. Or as Trump has said, she is “trigger happy.”

Broader U.S. Russia Relations

“Now if this sounds familiar (Putin’s actions in Crimea, jw), it’s what Hitler did back in the 30s….. All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people….”

Hillary Clinton comments comparing Putin’s actions to Hitler’s at a private gathering, March, 2014

“Mrs Clinton has chosen to take up a very aggressive stance against our country, against Russia.

“Mr Trump, on the other hand, calls for cooperation – at least when it comes to the international fight against terrorism.

“Naturally we welcome those who would like to cooperate with us. And we consider it wrong, that we always have to be in conflict with one another, creating existential threats for each other and for the whole world.

“If somebody out there wants confrontation, this is not our choice but this means that there will be problems.”

President Vladimir Putin addressing a group of journalists in Russia, October, 2016.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia and China and all these countries? Wouldn’t it be nice?”

Donald Trump at a rally in Clinton, Iowa, January, 2016, stating a position that he has often voiced.

*****

My progressive friends dismiss this and many other statements of Trump’s with the easy rejoinder that Trump is inconsistent and opportunistic, that one cannot believe what he says.  But his statements on Russia are quite consistent. And they are quite the opposite of opportunistic; they do not gain him votes, they have cost him votes. He stated his Russia friendly position from the beginning in the Republican primaries, as, for example, in the statement above which was made in Iowa before the caucuses. That was no advantage to him. The Republican Party at that time was dominated by the neocons, and its Establishment remains hawkish to the present as John McCain, Mitt Romney and many others demonstrate on a near daily basis. Trump has stuck with his position right up through the final presidential debate, even though his own vice presidential candidate has tried to pull him away from it and even though Hillary has used it as a club with which to beat him. There has been no inconsistency and it has been costly for him. That means you can take it to the bank as a matter of principle for him.

In fact, Trump has been as determined and consistent in seeking peace with Russia and Syria as Clinton has been in demonizing Putin and seeking a no-fly zone in Syria. That is a clear and striking difference between them.

A testimony of great value to progressives

On the issue of war and nuclear weapons, it is actually Hillary’s policies which are much scarier than Donald Trump (sic) who does not want to go to war with Russia. He wants to seek modes of working together, which is the route that we need to follow not to go into confrontation and nuclear war with Russia.

— Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for president, interview on October 12, 2016.

If, dear reader, you do not believe that Hillary will put us in a war situation with Russia to advance the power of the Indispensible Nation and the Exceptionals, then please read again the first three quotes at the beginning of this essay. In the absence of Hillary from his Cabinet, Obama has been wary about plunging into a misadventure in Syria. But Hillary does not hesitate when it comes to such bloody undertakings; she revels in them.

And if you have priorities that outstrip the question of survival, then this essay will mean little to you. But I submit that most other questions pale into insignificance next to this one – if not for you, then for your loved ones and for your fellow human beings.

John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com.

October 29, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Michael Moore Owes Me $4.99

By David Swanson | Let’s Try Democracy | October 28, 2016

Michael Moore has made some terrific movies in the past, and Where to Invade Next may be the best of them, but I expected Trumpland to be (1) about Trump, (2) funny, (3) honest, (4) at least relatively free of jokes glorifying mass murder. I was wrong on all counts and would like my $4.99 back, Michael.

Moore’s new movie is a film of him doing a stand-up comedy show about how wonderfully awesome Hillary Clinton is — except that he mentions Trump a bit at the beginning and he’s dead serious about Clinton being wonderfully awesome.

This film is a text book illustration of why rational arguments for lesser evilist voting do not work. Lesser evilists become self-delusionists. They identify with their lesser evil candidate and delude themselves into adoring the person. Moore is not pushing the “Elect her and then hold her accountable” stuff. He says we have a responsibility to “support her” and “get behind her,” and that if after two years — yes, TWO YEARS — she hasn’t lived up to a platform he’s fantasized for her, well then, never fear, because he, Michael Moore, will run a joke presidential campaign against her for the next two years (this from a guy who backed restricting the length of election campaigns in one of his better works).

Moore maintains that virtually all criticism of Hillary Clinton is nonsense. What do we think, he asks, that she asks how many millions of dollars you’ve put into the Clinton Foundation and then she agrees to bomb Yemen for you? Bwahahaha! Pretty funny. Except that Saudi Arabia put over $10 million into the Clinton Foundation, and while she was Secretary of State Boeing put in another $900,000, upon which Hillary Clinton reportedly made it her mission to get the planes sold to Saudi Arabia, despite legal restrictions — the planes now dropping U.S.-made bombs on Yemen with U.S. guidance, U.S. refueling mid-air, U.S. protection at the United Nations, and U.S. cover in the form of pop-culture distraction and deception from entertainers like Michael Moore.

Standing before a giant Air Force missile and enormous photos of Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore claims that substantive criticism of Clinton can consist of only two things, which he dismisses in a flash: her vote for a war on Iraq and her coziness with Wall Street. He says nothing more about what that “coziness” consists of, and he claims that she’s more or less apologized and learned her lesson on Iraq.

What? It wasn’t one vote. It was numerous votes to start the war, fund it, and escalate it. It was the lies to get it going and keep it going. It’s all the other wars before and since.

  • She says President Obama was wrong not to launch missile strikes on Syria in 2013.
  • She pushed hard for the overthrow of Qadaffi in 2011.
  • She supported the coup government in Honduras in 2009.
  • She has backed escalation and prolongation of war in Afghanistan.
  • She skillfully promoted the White House justification for the war on Iraq.
  • She does not hesitate to back the use of drones for targeted killing.
  • She has consistently backed the military initiatives of Israel.
  • She was not ashamed to laugh at the killing of Qadaffi.
  • She has not hesitated to warn that she could obliterate Iran.
  • She is eager to antagonize Russia.
  • She helped facilitate a military coup in Ukraine.
  • She has the financial support of the arms makers and many of their foreign customers.
  • She waived restrictions at the State Department on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar, all states wise enough to donate to the Clinton Foundation.
  • She supported President Bill Clinton’s wars and the power of the president to make war without Congress.
  • She has advocated for arming fighters in Syria and for a “No Fly” zone.
  • She supported a surge in Iraq even before President Bush did.

That’s just her war problem. What about her banking problem, prison problem, fracking problem, corporate trade problem, corporate healthcare problem, climate change problem, labor problem, Social Security problem, etc.?

Moore parts company from substantive critique in order to lament unproven rightwing claims that Hillary Clinton has murdered various people. “I hope she did,” screams Moore. “That’s who I want as Commander in Chief!” Hee hee hee.

Then Moore shamelessly pushes the myth that Hillary tried to create single-payer, or at least “universal” healthcare (whatever that is) in the 1990s. In fact, as I heard Paul Wellstone tell it, single-payer easily won the support of Clinton’s focus group, but she buried it for her corporate pals and produced the phonebook-size monstrosity that was dead on arrival but reborn in another form years later as Obamacare. She killed single-payer then, has not supported it since, and does not propose it now. (Well, she does admit in private that it’s the only thing that works, as her husband essentially blurts out in public.) But Moore claims that because we didn’t create “universal” healthcare in the 1990s we all have the blood of millions on our hands, millions whom Hillary would have saved had we let her.

Moore openly fantasizes: what would it be like if Hillary Clinton is secretly progressive? Remember that Moore and many others did the exact same thing with Obama eight years ago. To prove Clinton’s progressiveness Moore plays an audio clip of her giving a speech at age 22 in which she does not hint at any position on any issue whatsoever.

Mostly, however, Moore informs us that Hillary Clinton is female. He anticipates “that glorious moment when the other gender has a chance to run this world and kick some righteous ass.” Now tell me please, dear world, if your ass is kicked by killers working for a female president will you feel better about it? How do you like Moore’s inclusive comments throughout his performance: “We’re all Americans, right?”

Moore’s fantasy is that Clinton will dash off a giant pile of executive orders, just writing Congress out of the government — executive orders doing things like releasing all nonviolent drug offenders from prison immediately (something the real Hillary Clinton would oppose in every way she could).

But when he runs for president, Moore says, he’ll give everybody free drugs.

I’ll tell you the Clinton ad I’d like to see. She’s standing over a stove holding an egg. “This is your brain,” she says solemnly, cracking it into the pan with a sizzle. “This is your brain on partisanship.”

October 29, 2016 Posted by | Film Review, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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