New York Times editors never let facts interfere with their worldview, consistently misinforming readers, willfully lying.
On Tuesday, they ignored Obama’s imperial madness, his high crimes against peace, his rage for wars, waging them in multiple theaters, using ISIS and other terrorist groups as US foot soldiers.
Instead they praised what demands universal condemnation and accountability, saying in a Tuesday speech, Obama “listed the ways in which his administration has worked to subdue the threat of terrorism abroad and home” – at the same time denouncing what he called Trump’s “dangerous” mindset.
Fact: America created ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups.
Fact: It uses them in Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, providing their fighters with arms and other material support, waging wars on sovereign independent states, wanting US-controlled puppet regimes replacing them.
What’s ongoing is longstanding imperial policy, wanting all nations transformed into US vassal states. Instead of denouncing America’s war on humanity, The Times supports it.
As part of its pro-Clinton, anti-Trump campaign, it quoted Obama’s Big Lie about nonexistent US “pluralism and… openness, our rule of law, our civil liberties, the very things that make this country great.”
“The very things that make us exceptional.” The very things neocon infested Washington rejects.
On Thursday, Obama heads for Orlando – not “to bring solace to grieving families and a stricken city” as The Times suggests – solely to exploit last Sunday’s shootings for political advantage, ignoring a likely state-sponsored false flag, his administration responsible for what happened.
He’s been at war with Islam throughout his tenure, Hillary Clinton its lead orchestrator as secretary of state, an unindicted war criminal/racketeer The Times endorses.
Ignoring her rage for escalated war on humanity and increased crackdowns on fundamental homeland freedoms in the wake of Orlando, it praised her for “echo(ing) many of (Obama’s) points and even some of his language” – quoting her saying “(h)istory will remember what we do in this moment.”
“History” documents millions of US imperial victims at home and abroad, its contempt for rule of law principles, its rage for unchallenged dominance, its threat to world peace.
Neocon infested Democrat and Republican parties represent pure evil. World peace hangs in the balance.
Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.
In a precedent-setting decision Tuesday, the Israeli military decided not to press charges against a senior officer who ordered his troops to bombard a hospital in Gaza in 2014 to reportedly “raise their morale” with a “revenge attack” after another officer was killed.
The officer, Lieutenant Colonel Neria Yeshurun, told military investigators that he was mad that he and the soldiers were unable to attend the funeral of an officer who was killed a few days before, so “we decided to fire a volley of shells toward the point from which he lost his life.”
According to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, Major Amihai Harch, Yeshurun’s commander, said at the time, “The only unusual thing [Yeshurun] did was that he put the incident on top of the eulogy to Dima, the company commander who was killed. That was certainly to raise [morale]. And I say to you on the level of facts — that raised morale and encouraged the soldiers to continue the mission.”
These admissions were made directly to the military investigators in Yeshurun’s case, but were not deemed sufficient to place any charges on the officer.
Although Israeli military policy says that revenge attacks are not allowed, former soldiers have reported that they are common practice in Israeli military units.
The shelling of the clinic was part of a larger attack on the Sheja’eyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza, in which more than 120 Palestinian civilians were killed in a single night during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2014. The 50-day long invasion resulted in more than 1400 Palestinians killed, including more than 400 children, and 91 Israelis, mainly soldiers killed during the invasion of Gaza.
The night of killings in Sheja’eyya became known to Palestinians as the Sheja’eyya massacre. Throughout the night, the shelling of the neighborhood was continuous, affecting every home – most of the neighborhood was completely destroyed, and many of those killed were crushed in the rubble of their own homes. Survivors ran through the streets carrying babies and children, desperate to escape the continuous Israeli assault.
The attack took place on July 31st, 2014, just a day after the bombing of a school where families had taken refuge. About the attack on the school, UN Secretary General stated, “I condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It is outrageous. It is unjustifiable, and it demands accountability and justice. Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children.” Since the time of the attack, there has been no accountability for the soldiers involved, and no charges.
Former Israeli soldier turned whistleblower Eran Efrati published accounts at the time, in August 2014, from soldiers in two different units reporting that their commanding officers had ordered them to carry out attacks against civilians in order to ‘revenge’ for soldiers who had been killed.
Obama praises the execution of Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour as an “important milestone” to peace, but his successor promises to become far more brutal.
“The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty
because freedom is their greatest fear – and they should be afraid,
because freedom is on the march.” – George W. Bush
Endless hopes were pinned on Barack Obama when he entered the Oval Office in 2009. Hardly anyone back then had seriously considered it possible that Obama would trump the belligerence even of George W. Bush, who was seemingly hated by the world over (and by whom the opening quotation was uttered) and would bomb nearly twice as many Muslim countries as his unspeakable predecessor.
Killing for Peace and Prosperity
On May 23, President Obama announced the killing of Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour through a drone strike in the Afghan-Pakistani border region. “Today marks an important milestone in our longstanding effort to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan,” Obama said bizarrely praising the extrajudicial execution of Mansour.
“This is a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said condemning Obama’s “important milestone” in the strongest terms. The attack took place on Pakistani soil, and Islamabad was neither involved in the planning nor informed about it in advance—which is why the U.S. drone attack, in fact, must be considered illegal.
In an Orwellian manner, Obama further mocked the Afghan people: “After so many years of conflict, today gives the people of Afghanistan and the region a chance at a different, better future.” As if out of the blue the Taliban would lay down their arms now.
Although Mansour’s execution was the first time in history that a head of the Taliban could be taken out, its positive impacts must be heavily contested. Even a U.S. official told Voice of America that “there will be little battlefield impact” as a result of Mansour’s death.
‘Fasten Your Seat Belts, We Will Take Our Revenge!’
Just two days after Obama’s “milestone” statement, the Taliban announced their new leader: the cleric Haibatullah Akhundzada, who belongs to the old guard with his two decades of service and represents the utmost extremist wing of the Taliban (although such a distinction may sound grotesque to Western ears).
While his murdered predecessor Mansour has been described as “reclusive,” “softly-spoken,” “smart and composed,” a “man of quiet words” and as a “strong proponent of peace talks,” the rather unknown Akhundzada is deemed “extremely hardline,” a former Taliban official reports—”even by their standards.”
Akhundzada is a disciple of the radically puristic Islamic school of Wahhabism, which the Royal House of Saud and the Islamic State also adhere to. “That is where the danger is,” the former Taliban official continues, “that he can take the movement closer to the ideology of Islamic State militant group.”
Akhundzada was Chief Justice of the Shariah Courts during the Taliban rule between 1995-2001, issuing countless fatāwā, he gave his blessings to almost as many atrocities. Likewise, he is deemed the secret mastermind of the blowing up of the 1,500 year-old Buddha statues by the Taliban in 2001, which were condemned as “idolatrous images.” Thus, Akhundzada is certainly an extreme radical who will most likely dwarf his predecessor in terms of brutality.
For a demonstration of power and Akhundzada’s own profiling, analysts expect a massive wave of violence in his initial period of leadership. Likewise, an anonymous Taliban source told Al-Jazeera that under the new leader the terrorist group has pledged to take bloody revenge for Mansour’s killing. The foreign forces and Afghan government “should now fasten their seat belts as the attacks will continue (and) we come out stronger than before.”
The appointment of their new boss, in fact, was accompanied by an attack in Kabul, for which the Taliban immediately claimed responsibility. A suicide bomber blew a bus with court employees to pieces and claimed the lives of ten people.
Without the senseless—and first and foremost illegal—drone murder of Mansour, a comparatively halfway-moderate and not an ultra-radical “Stone Age mullah” would still be at the head of the Taliban today, and 10 court employees and random civilians in Kabul would still be alive.
Given the outlined developments only of the three days following Mansour’s execution, Obama’s ramblings of an “important milestone” are nothing but pure mockery and a slap in the face to the Afghan population, which he had promised “a different, better future” only a few days earlier.
A Dead Leader at the Head
The original Taliban leader—and close ally of the recently killed Mansour—Mullah Mohammed Omar was on the U.S.’s Most Wanted list for 15 long years. In 2013, he finally died—whether he was killed by a U.S. drone strike or passed away due to tuberculosis has not yet been determined with certainty.
The remarkable trait with regard to Mullah Omar’s case, however, is that it took two full years before his death came to light. Not only were the U.S. intelligence community and the world public at large kept in the dark until 2015, with the exception of a handful of individual leaders, but not even any single fighter among the Taliban foot soldiers had any ideas about the death of their longtime chief.
Despite a dead leader at their head, the renowned Brookings Institution noted that “the 2015 fighting season between the Taliban and Afghan security forces is turning out to be the bloodiest on record since 2001.”
Apparently, the only real consequence of decades-long leader Mullah Omar’s death is that the U.S. government can strike off his name from its Most Wanted list and luckily save the US$10 million of bounty on Omar’s head.
If Mullah Omar—the legendary one-eyed founder of the Taliban, the ruler of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the “Commander of the Faithful“—can be dead for two whole years unnoticed by the international community and even by his fellow brethren, it is quite a strong clue for the second possible scenario that can occur when a terrorist leader is executed: it makes, quite simply, no practical odds whether a terrorist leader is dead or alive.
A Naïve Wishful Thinking
Something similar applies to the former public enemy No. 1. The supposed death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 (who was, by the way, never officially accused of the September 11 attacks by the U.S. government, due to the absence of evidence) is shrouded in countless myths.
Only a few hours after the assassination of bin Laden by Navy SEALs special forces in north Pakistani Abbottabad—which was no less shrouded in myths—in social sciences the debate on the question commenced regarding whether the death of the terrorist godfather bin Laden will have any appreciable impact on the al-Qaida network at all. Massive doubts about the U.S. government’s quasi-religious dogma of ‘leadership decapitation weakens the whole group’ dominated the debate from its outset.
Bin Laden’s death “won’t cause those who espouse extremism to suddenly change their minds,” even a high US Colonel concedes the strategical nonsense of this kind of operations on the day of the execution. “Those who were committed to violence yesterday remain committed to violence today,” Col. Maraia concludes.
The much hoped-for weakening of global terrorism by bin Laden’s death remained only little more than a naïve, wishful thinking. The subsequent massive strengthening of regional al-Qaida offshoots – Jabhat al-Nusrah in Syria, Al-Shabaab in Somalia and especially AQAP in Yemen – decentralized and decreased the power of Al-Qaida headquarters in the heartland of Afghanistan-Pakistan, however, this represented by no means an overall weakening of the network. It was rather a fatal terrorist export to the entire Middle East.
The Execution of Terrorist Leaders: ‘Highly Counterproductive’
The question remains whether the senselessness of executing terrorist leaders—as previously outlined with three cases—is merely an accumulation of individual examples, or whether they might yet follow a general pattern?
The endless list of executed leaders of Al-Qaida, Taliban & Co.—whose executions certainly every time were a “milestone”—however, casts doubt on whether the strategy of the U.S. government proved to be successful and if global terrorism declined as a consequence of “leadership decapitation”.
In addition to a variety of indicators—that all know only one direction—it is mainly the bare number of people killed by terrorism that mercilessly crushes this assumption: between 2002 and 2014, the annual number rose by an unspeakable 4500 percent. Thus, in the glorious years of the “War on Terror” a 45-fold increase of terror fatalities occurred, despite killing countless terrorist leaders one after another.
In a remarkable study of the University of Chicago from 2009, the PhD student Jenna Jordon explored the same issues. Jordan studied 298 cases since 1945, and examined the impact on the structure and the overall future of terrorist organizations after their leaders were executed.
Jordan’s research suggests that small and young terrorist groups, indeed, seem to be negatively affected by and are more likely to collapse after the liquidation of their leaders. But for decades-old groups counting thousands of members such as the Taliban the exact opposite case is true. Extrajudicial executions as the recent one of Mansour are “highly counterproductive,” Jordan concludes.
As an explanation the by now graduated scientist states that “going after the leader may strengthen a group’s resolve, result in retaliatory attacks, increase public sympathy for the organization, or produce more lethal attacks.” In other words: the execution of their leaders strengthens the terrorist group at all different levels.
Jordan closes in an unambiguously clear manner: “Overall, this study shows that we need to rethink current counterterrorism policies.”
In Foreign Policy, the renowned law professor Rosa Brooks addresses the question of why the U.S. government adheres so relentlessly to the policy of executing terrorist leaders that is so obviously doomed to failure. She’s seeking answers in the anthropological school of thought.
Since the dawn of human societies, their members performed certain rituals—so-called apotropaic magic—by which the gods should be appeased and misfortune averted: ritual offerings, the noise magic of New Year’s Eve, the use of holy water during baptism, exorcisms, rain dances, grotesque faces carved into pumpkins at Halloween.
Due to lack of rational explanations Brooks is now putting the U.S. policy of “terrorist leadership decapitation” in this very line of ritual pacification of the societal psyche:
“We modern Americans don’t believe in demons, rain dances, or the efficacy of sacrificing children or goats. We’ve developed our very own 21st-century magic rituals—and we call them ‘counterterrorism programs.’”
America’s Fatal Fallacy
When the head of Yemen’s al-Qaida offshoot al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, was killed by a U.S. drone in summer 2015, Obama’s spokesman praised the murder with the words, Wuhayshi’s death “brings us closer to degrading and ultimately defeating these groups.”
The question arises whether the Obama administration actually believes this baloney when even a first-class hawk like Juan Zarate—top counterterrorism advisor to former President George W. Bush—concedes that the murder of AQAP chief Wuhayshi has “little relevance”, and on the contrary, would rather strengthen the terrorist groups in Yemen.
The “War on Terror” is an endless fatal fallacy, a logical circularity. It feeds on itself.
Due to its medial omnipresence, we probably might be no longer aware of the fact that the term “War on Terror” itself is an oxymoron: violence ludicrously should be erased by more violence.
The way is the goal, and the actual goal of defeating the terror, however, has become so abstract. It continues to play a fundamentally important role for the moral legitimacy of the whole adventure, but a practical relevance has long been gone.
The United States as the self-proclaimed terrorist hunter No. 1 went astray a long time ago, far away from any reason.
The question may appear extremely naïve, but: Why does the U.S. carry on and on, and kill one alleged terrorist leader after another, although this approach evidentially is either not effective at all, or has time and again extremely adverse, bloody effects?
The Ukrainian intelligence service that has been guiding the investigation of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down of July 2014 recently blocked a United Nations inquiry into alleged torture sites under Ukrainian government control.
The U.N. inspectors called off their torture investigation late last month because Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, the SBU, denied the team access to detention facilities where human rights groups have found evidence of torture.
“The United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) has suspended its visit to Ukraine after being denied access to places in several parts of the country where it suspects people are being deprived of their liberty by the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU,” a U.N. statement said, with Sir Malcolm Evans, head of the four-member delegation, adding:
“This denial of access is in breach of Ukraine’s obligations as a State party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. It has meant that we have not been able to visit some places where we have heard numerous and serious allegations that people have been detained and where torture or ill-treatment may have occurred.”
Ukraine’s deputy justice minister Natalya Sevostyanova said the U.N. team was denied access to SBU centers in Mariupol and Kramatorsk, frontline towns in the simmering civil war between the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government and Russian-supported eastern Ukrainian rebels.
SBU director Vasyl Hrytsak said the reason for barring the U.N. team was to protect Ukrainian government secrets, adding: “If you arrive, for example, in the United States and ask to come to the C.I.A. or the F.B.I., to visit a basement or an office, do you think they will ever let you do it?”
But the relevance of this SBU secrecy to the MH-17 case, in which the airliner carrying 298 people was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, is that the SBU is an integral part of the Dutch-led multinational Joint Investigation Team that is trying to determine who was responsible for the attack.
The obstruction of the torture inquiry suggests that the SBU also would steer the JIT away from any evidence that might implicate a unit of the Ukrainian military in the shoot-down, a situation that would be regarded as a state secret which could severely undermine international support for the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev. Among the SBU’s official duties is the protection of Ukrainian government secrets.
A Breezy Report
Earlier this month, the JIT investigators published a breezy, notebook-style report on their progress, revealing how dependent they have become on information provided by the SBU and how they have grown to trust the Ukrainian intelligence service.
According to the report, the SBU helped shape the MH-17 investigation by supplying a selection of phone intercepts and other material. But the JIT seemed oblivious to the potentially grave conflict of interest, saying:
“Since the first week of September 2014, investigating officers from The Netherlands and Australia have worked here [in Kiev]. They work in close cooperation here with the Security and Investigation Service of the Ukraine (SBU). Immediately after the crash, the SBU provided access to large numbers of tapped telephone conversations and other data. …
“At first rather formal, cooperation with the SBU became more and more flexible. ‘In particular because of the data analysis, we were able to prove our added value’, says [Dutch police official Gert] Van Doorn. ‘Since then, we notice in all kinds of ways that they deal with us in an open way. They share their questions with us and think along as much as they can.’”
The JIT report continued: “With the tapped telephone conversations from SBU, there are millions of printed lines with metadata, for example, about the cell tower used, the duration of the call and the corresponding telephone numbers. The investigating officers sort out this data and connect it to validate the reliability of the material.
“When, for example, person A calls person B, it must be possible to also find this conversation on the line from person B to person A. When somebody mentions a location, that should also correlate with the cell tower location that picked up the signal. If these cross-checks do not tally, then further research is necessary.
“By now, the investigators are certain about the reliability of the material. ‘After intensive investigation, the material seems to be very sound’, says Van Doorn, ‘that also contributed to the mutual trust.’”
But would SBU turn over data that might reveal the role of a Ukrainian military unit in the shoot-down? Under the security agency’s secrecy mandate, could it even do so?
Further, the collegial dependence on the SBU has not led to a quick resolution of the MH-17 mystery, with the JIT’s investigative report now not expected until after the summer, i.e., more than two years after the shoot-down, and even then the report is to be kept secret.
In this month’s update, the JIT would not even endorse last fall’s finding by the Dutch Safety Board that MH-17 was likely brought down by a Buk anti-aircraft missile system fired somewhere in a 320-square-kilometer area in eastern Ukraine, territory that was then partly controlled by the rebels and partly by the government.
Nor does the JIT update address last October’s findings of Dutch (i.e., NATO) intelligence that the only operational anti-aircraft missile batteries capable of bringing down a plane at 33,000 feet on July 17, 2014, were in the possession of the Ukrainian military.
“For the investigation into the weapon system that was used, the well known seven questions need to be answered are: who, what, where, when, which, how and why,” the update said. “In this investigation only the question of ‘when’ has been established irrefutably: flight MH17 crashed on 17 July 2014. The remaining questions require intensive investigation, according to Gerrit Thiry (team leader) and Susanne Huiberts (operational specialist) of the National Criminal Investigation Service.”
Punishing Russia
The MH-17 case also has relevance to the decision later this month by the European Union on whether to extend sanctions against Russia for another six months as the U.S. government wants. The E.U. imposed the sanctions amid a frenzied rush-to-judgment in late July 2014 blaming the Russians and the rebels for the deaths of the 298 people on MH-17 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Immediately after the shoot-down, the U.S. government sought to pin the blame on ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and their Russian government backers. However, after CIA analysts had time to evaluate U.S. satellite, electronic and other intelligence data, the U.S. government went curiously silent about what it had discovered, including the possible identity of the people who were responsible. The U.S. reticence, after the initial haste to blame Russia, suggested that the more detailed findings undercut the original claims.
A source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the CIA’s conclusion pointed toward a rogue Ukrainian operation involving a hard-line oligarch with the possible motive of shooting down Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official plane returning from South America that day, with similar markings as MH-17. The source said a Ukrainian warplane ascertained that the plane was not Putin’s but the attack went ahead anyway, with the assumption that the tragedy would be blamed on the pro-Russian rebels or on Russia directly.
Officially, however, the U.S. government has not revised its initial claims that were made within five days of the shoot-down, fingering the rebels and the Russians. I have been unable to determine if the assessment of Ukrainian responsibility represented a dissident or consensus view inside the U.S. intelligence community.
Although Ukraine would have been an obvious suspect in the attack, the Ukrainian SBU was invited to play a key role in the investigation along with investigators from Australia and the Netherlands. Under the JIT agreement, participating governments, which also include Belgium and Malaysia, have the right to block the release of information to the public.
The recent JIT report hails the comradeship between the Australian and Dutch investigators and their Ukrainian hosts, despite some early difficulties.
“An incredible amount of research material; differing legal systems and initial unfamiliarity with each other. Despite this, both Australian and Dutch members working in the Field Office in Kiev have managed to build good relations with each other and with the Ukraine to effectively conduct the investigation into the MH17 crash,” the report said.
“They are professionals who recognize each other’s love for the police work. They understand each other’s circumstances. And they are, regardless of their country of origin, motivated to do their utmost to uncover the truth. …
“‘The thing is to see how you can keep it workable”, says Van Doorn, ‘we like practical solutions. That means ‘poldering’ [the Dutch practice of policy-making by consensus].’”
Yet, the idea of “poldering” – or reaching consensus – with Ukraine’s SBU, an agency that has just thwarted a United Nations investigation into allegations that the SBU engages in the torture of ethnic Russian rebels, raises further questions about the objectivity and reliability of the MH-17 probe.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Palestinians along with a group of Muslim countries have lashed out at a UN decision to elect Israel as the chairman of one of its permanent committees for the first time in the history of Israeli occupation.
Danny Danon, Israel’s representative at the United Nations, was elected Monday to head the world body’s Legal Committee also called the Sixth Committee, which oversees issues related to international law.
It is first time that Tel Aviv will head one of the world body’s six permanent committees since joining the United Nations in 1949.
His election, however, elicited angry reactions from Muslim countries, including those in the Arab League and 57 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The chief Palestinian delegate at the UN, Riyad Mansour, strongly denounced the results of the election, which according to him was “threatening the work of the Sixth Committee.”
Mansour said the Israeli regime has long been “the biggest violator of international law.”
The General Assembly has six standing committees that report to it on several issues, including human rights, decolonization, disarmament, economic and financial issues, as well as the UN budget and legal issues.
Danon was nominated for the position by the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) in the UN. Israel has been a temporary member of the WEOG since 2000, but joined the group permanently in December 2013.
The chairmanship of assembly is allocated on a rotational basis and is usually confirmed without a vote.
Deputy US Ambassador to the UN David Pressman, however, reacted angrily to the opponents of Danon’s election.
“We need a United Nations that includes Israel, that brings Israel closer, not one that systematically pushes Israel away.”
However, the UN warned Israel of unspecified action over its failure to cooperate with its reporters.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein slammed Tel Aviv for denying UN special rapporteurs access to the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
“I must emphasize that non-cooperation by governments will not result in my office remaining silent,” he said.
He said investigators from his office had an important role in providing factual information that could prevent further violence.
Zeid also touched on the issue of the Palestinians held in Israel’s prisons, saying; “Over 400 Palestinian children are currently detained in Israeli prisons.”
He warned that violence could would break out again between Israeli forces and the Palestinian people unless the regime lifts the blockade on the Gaza Strip.
Gaza, one of the most densely-populated areas in the world, has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007.
Last Wednesday at noon at Arlington National Cemetery I attended the annual commemorative gathering of the survivors and friends of the U.S.S. Liberty. The moving service included the ringing of a ship’s bell for each one of the thirty-four American sailors, Marines and civilians that were killed in the deliberate Israeli attack that sought to sink the intelligence gathering ship and kill all its crew. Present were a number of surviving crewmembers as well as veterans like myself and other Americans who are committed to ensuring that the story of the Liberty will not die in hopes that someday the United States government will have the courage to acknowledge what actually happened on that fateful day.
It was the forty-ninth anniversary of the attack. In truth the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, has almost faded from memory, with a younger generation completely unaware that a United States naval vessel was once deliberately attacked and nearly sunk by America’s “greatest friend and ally” Israel. The attack was followed by a cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States even back nearly fifty years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country.
It was in truth the worst attack ever carried out on a U.S. Naval vessel in peace time. In addition to the death toll, 171 more of the crew were wounded in the two-hour assault, which was clearly intended to destroy the intelligence gathering vessel operating in international waters collecting information on the ongoing Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Israelis, whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up so Egypt could be blamed, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and with gunboats from the sea.
The incredible courage and determination of the surviving crew was the only thing that kept the Liberty from sinking. The ship’s commanding officer Captain William McGonagle was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic role in keeping the ship afloat, though President Lyndon Baines Johnson broke with tradition and refused to hold the medal ceremony in the White House, also declining to award it personally, delegating that task to the Secretary of the Navy in a closed to the public presentation made at the Washington Navy Yard. The additional medals given to other crew members in the aftermath of the attack made the U.S.S. Liberty the most decorated ship based on a single engagement with hostile forces in the history of the United States Navy.
The cover-up of the attack began immediately. The Liberty crew was sworn to secrecy over the incident, as were the Naval dockyard workers in Malta and even the men of the U.S.S. Davis, which had assisted the badly damaged Liberty to port. A hastily convened and conducted court of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain acted under orders from Washington to declare the attack a case of mistaken identity. The inquiry’s senior legal counsel Captain Ward Boston, who subsequently declared the attack to be a “deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew,” also described how “President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” The court’s findings were rewritten and sections relating to Israeli war crimes, to include the machine gunning of life rafts, were excised. Following in his father’s footsteps, Senator John McCain of Arizona has used his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to effectively block any reconvening of a board of inquiry to reexamine the evidence. Most of the documents relating to the Liberty incident have never been released to the public in spite of the 49 years that have passed since the attack took place.
The faux court of inquiry and the medals awarded in secret were only the first steps in the cover-up, which has persisted to this day, orchestrated by politicians and a media that seem to place Israel’s interests ahead of those of the United States. Liberty survivors have been finding it difficult even to make their case in public. In early April a billboard that read “Help the USS Liberty Survivors – Attacked by Israel” was taken down in New Bedford Massachusetts. The billboard had been placed by the Honor Liberty Vets Organization and, as is normal practice, was paid for through a contractual arrangement that would require the billboard company to post the image for a fixed length of time. It was one of a number of billboards placed in different states. Inevitably, Israel’s well connected friends began to complain. One Jewish businessman threatened to take his business elsewhere, so the advertising company obligingly removed the billboard two weeks early.
After forty-nine years, the dwindling number of survivors of the Liberty are not looking for punishment or revenge. When asked, they will tell you that they only ask for accountability, that an impartial inquiry into the attack be convened and that the true story of what took place finally be revealed to the public.
That Congress is deaf to the pleas of the Liberty crew should surprise no one as the nation’s legislative body has been for years, as Pat Buchanan once put it, “Israeli occupied territory.” The Lobby’s ability to force Congress and even the presidency to submit to its will has been spelled out in some detail by critics, first by Paul Findley in They Dare to Speak Out, later by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in The Israel Lobby, in Alison Weir’s Against Our Better Judgment, and most recently in Kirk Beattie’s excellent Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East.
Congressional willingness to protect Israel even when it is killing Americans is remarkable, but it is symptom of the legislative body’s willingness to go to bat for Israel reflexively, even when it is damaging to U.S. interests and to the rights that American citizens are supposed to enjoy. I note particularly legislation currently working its way through Congress that will make it illegal for any federal funding to go to any entity that supports the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, better known as BDS. BDS is a way to put pressure on the Israeli government over its human rights abuses that is both non-violent and potentially effective. As the federal government has its hooks all over the economy and at various levels in education as well as state and local government its threat to force the delegitimization of BDS is far from an empty one.
Existing laws in more than twenty states with more on the way, including most recently New York, punishing entities that support the peaceful BDS movement by labeling BDS as anti-Semitic and making it illegal or sanctionable to support it are direct attacks on free speech. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stated “We want Israel to know we are on its side.” And it doesn’t stop with BDS. Recently signed trade agreements with Europe were drafted to be conditional on European acceptance of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank while Israel is also pushing to censor the internet to make material that constitutes “incitement” banned. Incitement would, of course, include anything critical of Israel or its government on the grounds that it is anti-Semitic.
Democratic candidate presumptive Hillary Clinton has explicitly promised to do all in her power to oppose BDS, telling an adoring American Israel Public Affairs Committee audience in March that “Many of the young people here today are on the front lines of the battle to oppose the alarming boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS. Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. I’ve been sounding the alarm for a while now. As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS.”
So the treatment of the U.S.S. Liberty should surprise no one in a country whose governing class has been for decades doing the bidding of the powerful lobby of a tiny client state that has been nothing but trouble and expense for the United States of America. Will it ever end? As the Israel Lobby currently controls the relevant parts of the federal government and much of the media change is not likely to happen overnight, but there are some positive signs. If the Democratic Party platform committee under the influence of Bernie Sanders is successful in toning down the usual extravagant praise of Israel – against the wishes of Hillary, one might add – that would be a sign that change is difficult but not necessarily impossible. If Donald Trump wins and holds to his promise to be neutral between Israel and Palestine in negotiations that too would be a marked shift in perception of the conflict. And if the American people finally wake up and realize that they are tired of the entire farce and decide to wash their hands of the Middle East that would change everything. Just imagine picking up the morning newspaper and not reading a front page story about the warnings and threats coming from that great world leader Benjamin Netanyahu. That would be quite remarkable.
Investigative journalist William Boardman’s findings on US vaporization of Marshall Islands and human experimentation on Marshall Islands native “savages”, as they were classed by US media:
“Nuclear Savage” is a recent documentary film that explores American nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands, 1946-1958, and particularly the secret Project 4.1: an American experiment in exposing Pacific Islanders to overdoses of radiation – deliberate human radiation poisoning – just to get better data on this method of maiming and killing people. The public broadcasting establishment has spent more than two years keeping this story off the air.
The preview reel of “Nuclear Savage” includes a clip with a stentorian newsreel announcer reporting on the American treatment of Marshall Islanders in April 1957, and explaining to his predominantly American audience:
“The Marshallese caught by fallout got 175 roentgens of radiation. These are fishing people, savages by our standards, so a cross-section was brought to Chicago for testing. The first was John, the mayor of Rongelap Atoll…. John, as we said, is a savage, but a happy, amenable savage.”
…
“Some use the term ‘savage’ to refer to people from primitive cultures, but nuclear experimentation pushed savagery to new levels. In the 1950s, the U.S. conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands, vaporizing islands and exposing entire populations to fallout. The islanders on Rongelap received near fatal doses of radiation from one test, and were then moved onto a highly contaminated island to serve as human guinea pigs for 30 years.”
Horowitz, the director of Nuclear Savage, notes that the US “bl[e]w up all these islands … purposely contaminated all these people as human experiments.”
Boardman continues:
In 1998, staff from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a comparison study to compare the amount of radioactive Iodine-131 at four different radiation-polluted sites, measured in curies (1,000 curies of Cesium-137, as found in a radiation therapy machine, could produce serious health effects in a direct exposure of just a few minutes). The CDC team reported its finding that the atmospheric release of curies of Iodine-137 at the Hanford nuclear processing plant was 739,000 curies; at Chernobyl the release was 40 million curies; at the Nevada bomb test site, 150 million curies; and in the Marshall Islands, 6.3 billion curies (more that 30 times as much radiation as the other three sites combined).
Even recently, the US has tried “to re-re-settle some populations back to their home islands that were still dangerously radioactive.” However, the film helped rally the islanders and reduced the US re-re-settlement effort to nothing more than “a bunch of empty houses.”
One year ago, nearly to the day, the Marshall Islands bravely brought a lawsuit to the International Court of Justice and U.S. Federal District Court “against the U.S. and the eight other Nuclear Weapons States (NWS)”, which are refusing “to meet their treaty obligations to disarm.”
Obama, in direct contravention of US word and legal requirement, is devoting 1 to 1.5 trillion dollars to US nuclear weapons development, even as the US, also illegally, cuts off water to some of its own, poor residents.
From 1946-1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear weapons experiments on the Marshall Islands, the equivalent of “one-and-a-half Hiroshima bombs” every day.
On a related note, Obama continues to refuse to give the country of Diego Garcia back to its indigenous inhabitants. The pristine island nation was seized and cleansed of its nationals by the US and Britain, then turned into a US toxic waste dump-site and base for Washington’s global execution and torture racket.
Seven minute trailer for Nuclear Savage:
Reporter focuses on global force dynamics and writes professionally for the film industry. On twitter @_DirtyTruths with UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson.
Media report that presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is meeting with advisers in Vermont on Sunday.
This last week, many spoke laudingly of the recently deceased Muhammad Ali.
As some noted, Ali’s great contribution was not being a talented athlete, heavy weight champion — there are many such prominent sports figures, but they don’t play a historic role. His true greatness came because at the height of his fame and powers, he challenged an oppressive system: He refused to go into the Army during the Vietnam War. It cost him a great deal of money and stature — and tremendously helped the world and assured his canonization.
Sanders has a similar opportunity now. As pundits are voicing alleged ecstasy over Hillary Clinton “shattering the glass ceiling” by becoming the first female presidential nominee of a major political party, the first female president in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, has been ousted in a defacto coup. This has been fostered by establishment media in Brazil, as for-profit media often plays the role of king maker in ways stark and subtle in every country, including the U.S., as we’ve seen in this current election.
Rousseff’s cabinet was diverse, both in terms of gender and ethnically. The new government is all white males. Rousseff was set to investigate corruption, including in the Brazilian Senate, and the coup was planned out by corrupt senators. Indeed, the anticorruption minister in the new coup government was recently forced to resign when a tape was leaked about how he was trying to cover up corruption. All this and more is being done with U.S. government silence and tacit support.
Certainly, Sanders has challenged the power of Wall Street and the wealthy from within the Democratic Party. But, largely because of the role of the media in fostering a mantle of celebrity around Hillary Clinton (and Donald Trump for that matter), they are the likely nominees.
But perhaps, for all the good that Sanders did, he might feel a measure of remorse for what he hasn’t done: Spoken serious about the U.S. government’s role in the world. Even in his discussions of inequality, he’s confined himself to inequality inside the U.S. But what about global poverty?
Has Sanders been moved by slums in Latin America? Refugee camps in the Mideast? Stark poverty in Africa? Sweatshops in Asia? He went to a Vatican conference where Bolivian President Evo Morales also spoke. They chatted. What can be built from that? How can progressive leaders work together globally? How can movements cross boundaries? Are not movements weakened when they confine themselves to national barriers?
Ali took himself out of his comfort zone. He focused not just on getting a seat on a bus for himself, and not just for African Americans, but spoke against the Vietnam War. Sanders has not transcended himself. As Ben Jealous has said, Sanders “has been giving the same damn speech for 50 years.” Well, that’s not necessarily a good thing. There are people living in horrible conditions around the world, in large part because of economic, political and military policies determined in marble facade buildings in Washington, D.C. Sanders has been remarkably mute about that.
The power of the establishment rests in large part because of its global connections. But progressive forces have been reluctant to wield such power. Recall shortly before the invasion of Iraq, there were quasi-global protests against the war on Feb. 15, 2003. Just after that, the New York Times called the peace movement “the second super power.” Yes, that didn’t stop the war, but that was because there was only some global solidarity late in the day. The answer is more solidarity sooner.
And now, Sanders has campaigned in all 50 states. It’s late in the day, but not too late for him to break the wall and seriously engage the rest of the world. That should start with going to Brazil and meeting with Rousseff. It would help overturn the coup, thus doing a tremendous service to the people of Brazil and it would put the heat on the U.S. government regarding its behind the scenes machinations. It would also highlight the fake feminism that surrounds the Clinton campaign. Do we want women in officialdom simply so that they can be as murderous and corrupt as men have been? Or do we want a different kind of politics that is inclusive in terms of gender, but that is based on solidarity and uplift rather than “I got mine”?
Clinton’s crimes on foreign policy constitute quite a rap sheet. Sanders has at best scratched the surface. From bombing Libya, to voting for the Iraq war, to backing Netanyahu, to backing the Honduran coup and responsibility for the killing of Berta Cáceres, it’s a gruesome tail that few have really come to grips with.
And perhaps Sanders, struck by fear of Trump, desperately wants to look away. He doesn’t want a sun rise, he wants a sunset. Does he want to be a pawn in the Clinton machine? See the roles that other past “insurgent” candidates play now: Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson, Dennis Kucinich. They played the role of what Bruce Dixon has called “sheepdogging” — they ended up being little more than a tool of the Democratic Party establishment to get presumably serious progressives to end up supporting an increasingly pro-corporate Democratic Party. That same fate of accessory or marginalization awaits Sanders.
Now, the consultants and “advisers” he’s meeting with this weekend are probably pushing Sanders to accept what bread crumbs he can get from Clinton & Co. After all, they have their careers to think about, and their careers are with the Democratic Party machine or some appendage of it.
But real power, real greatness, doesn’t come from accepting such a role. That’s why we remember the name Muhammad Ali and forget many, many others.
The 13threport of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights situation in Ukraine between 16 November 2015 and 15 February 2016, when the Minsk Agreements were in force, has come as a shock to Kiev.
According to the UN, more than three million people live in the areas directly affected by the conflict. The exact number of people who have left Ukraine-controlled territory is still unknown, although rough estimates range from 800,000 to 1,000,000 people. The Ukrainian government has estimated that more than a million people have left southeast Ukraine for Russia, Belarus and Europe. This figure does not match that of the Russian federal migration service, however: in 2015, around four million Ukrainians crossed the border, with nearly 2.6 million settling in Russia. More than a million people have arrived from southeast Ukraine. Residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are permitted to live freely in Russia.
The discrepancy in the figures clearly shows that Ukraine is not interested in keeping track of its citizens, whether within the country or abroad. This means that one of the aims of the military campaign launched in the east of the country is to displace the population from the area of conflict, predominantly to Russia. Given that refugees from the republics to Ukraine are facing discrimination in access to public services, according to the UN report, the authorities in Kiev do not seem to want the residents of Donbass either.
The UN also states that those living close to the contact line (nearly 800,000 people) are particularly suffering, and the lives of these people are constantly at risk. The UN mission believes that the assistance being given to the residents of Donbass is insufficient, even given Russia’s humanitarian convoys, although the fact that it was Ukraine that shut down all the social programmes and introduced the ‘blockade’ unfortunately remained beyond the scope of the report.
The UN believes that the permit regime introduced by Ukraine and the disorder at checkpoints are negatively reinforcing the isolation of those living in the DPR and LPR. Queues of up to 300-400 cars waiting on either side of the checkpoints are observed on a regular basis and this recently ended in tragedy. Due to the fact that the Ukrainian checkpoint is not open at night, civilians who had been queuing in their cars overnight were fired at by the Ukrainian side using illegal-calibre weapons (122 mm), resulting in the deaths of five people, including a pregnant woman.
During the period covered in the report, the Ukrainian armed forces have advanced even further into populated areas and the numerous attacks on the residential areas of Horlivka, Shakhtarsk and Debaltseve are also mentioned in the report.
Since the Minsk ceasefire agreements entered into force (i.e. since 15 February 2015), there have been 843 civilian casualties – 235 killed (216 adults and 19 children) and 608 injured (554 adults and 44 children). At the same time, the UN mission notes that it is unable to attribute some of the victims to either side of the conflict. It also emphasises that the real number of those killed and injured could be higher than that given in the report.
The number of people missing is particularly shocking. The Ukrainian side has reported 741 persons missing, while the DPR has registered 420 missing persons. In addition, the UN mission has ascertained that approximately 1,000 bodies held in morgues in government-controlled territory have still not been identified.
And once again the numbers are crying out that the Ukrainian government does not believe people to be important. The number of persons that Kiev has declared missing is a third less than the number of unidentified bodies! And the numbers also ignore the mortal remains in areas where hostilies took place – search operations are virtually non-existent. As the UN report states, there is not even a dedicated mechanism in place to gather statements from the relatives of missing persons.
The UN mission has also not taken into account the number of unmarked graves in cemeteries. The overwhelming majority of missing persons should not be looked for in the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, but among the thousands of bodies that have already been quietly buried or are still lying in morgues. It is possible that the official number of those who will never return has been hugely underestimated.
The efforts of the Ukrainian side aimed at searching for and identifying those killed and those missing are referred to in the UN report using the word «inaction».
Kiev cannot admit that to avoid responsibility, it is secretly carrying out a policy of ‘unidentified bodies’. It is also being suggested to relatives that missing persons are being held captive by DPR and LPR ‘separatists’.
The report concedes that some people recorded as missing may be alive, but are being held in secret places of detention either in the republics or in Ukrainian-controlled territory.
The UN mission has finally figured out that the secret prisons and torture in Ukraine are an established system that has become part of the state and its policies. Of the 1,925 criminal investigations launched into allegations of torture in 2015, 1,450 were closed.
The report has also provided yet more evidence that it is not a civil war. It is a war between those who seized power by means of a military coup and the people of Ukraine, a war that is hypocritically being referred to as an ‘anti-terrorist operation’.
As noted in the report, «throughout the country, OHCHR continued to receive allegations of enforced disappearances, arbitrary and incommunicado detention, and torture and ill-treatment of people accused by the Ukrainian authorities of ‘trespassing territorial integrity’, ‘terrorism’ or related offenses, or of individuals suspected of being members of, or affiliated with, the armed groups».
People are not just being tortured, but are also being executed without trial. In Sloviansk, for example, the basement of the local college is being used for this purpose. A basement used for torture and summary executions was also discovered by UN inspectors in Izium, Kharkiv district. In addition, «a network of unofficial places of detention, often located in the basement of regional SBU buildings, have been identified». The SBU also has such basements in Odessa and Kharkiv. In February 2016, between 20 to 30 people were detained in the basement of the Kharkiv regional SBU building, and the vast majority of prisoners were not arrested in accordance with legal procedures and were not charged.
The report also notes that the SBU obtains confessions of terrorism using torture, and those who sign the confessions are told that should they complain, then their families, including their children, will also be made to suffer. The Security Service of Ukraine refers to such methods as the use of «proportional» and «justified» force.
The 13th report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights situation in Ukraine appeared on 3 March 2016, but it is only now that the information bomb has exploded following an article in The Times, in which Ivan Simonovic, UN assistant secretary-general for human rights, talks about the report and also about five secret SBU prisons that a delegation of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture was not allowed access to, resulting in the delegation cutting short its visit to Ukraine…
The 13th report also completely destroys the myth that there are thousands of prisoners in the DPR and LPR. There is no trace of the thousands – in February 2016, the SBU gave the UN mission a list of 136 people who are allegedly being detained in custody in the republics, but nothing is known about this for sure. The list provided by the DPR authorities, however, looks completely different. «Some 1,110 persons were detained by the Government of Ukraine, including 363 members of the armed groups. This includes 577 people arrested for ‘their political views’ and 170 civilians ‘who have nothing to do with the conflict’», says the UN report. The SBU has gone overboard by essentially creating a system of concentration camps. The UN report likens the actions of the SBU to the seizure of hostages.
It has been impossible to keep the scandal hushed up, but while this regime exists in Ukraine, investigations into its criminal activities will be carried out along the same lines as the investigations into the people burned alive in Odessa on 2 May 2014. Namely that the executioners will remain free or under house arrest while the victims are imprisoned. For years.
One of the essential functions of the corporate media is to marginalise or silence acknowledgement of the history – and continuation – of Western imperial aggression. The coverage of the recent sentencing in Senegal of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad, for crimes against humanity, provides a useful case study.
The verdict could well have presented the opportunity for the media to examine in detail the complicity of the US, UK, France and their major allies in the Middle East and North Africa in the appalling genocide Habré inflicted on Chad during his rule – from 1982 to 1990. After all, Habré had seized power via a CIA-backed coup. As William Blum commented in Rogue State (2002: 152):
With US support, Habré went on to rule for eight years during which his secret police reportedly killed tens of thousands, tortured as many of 200,000 and disappeared an undetermined number.
Indeed, while coverage of Chad has been largely missing from the British corporate media, so too was the massive, secret war waged over these eight years by the United States, France and Britain from bases in Chad against Libyan leader Colonel Mu’ammar Gaddafi. (See Targeting Gaddafi: Secret Warfare and the Media, by Richard Lance Keeble, in Mirage in the Desert? Reporting the ‘Arab Spring’, edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble, Abramis, Bury St Edmunds, 2011, pp 281-296.)
By 1990, with the crisis in the Persian Gulf developing, the French government had tired of Habré’s genocidal policies while George Bush senior’s administration decided not to frustrate France in exchange for co-operation in its attack on Iraq. And so Habré was secretly toppled and in his place Idriss Déby was installed as the new President of Chad.
Yet the secret Chad coups can only be understood as part of the United States’ global imperial strategy. For since 1945, the US has intervened in more than 70 countries – in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia. Britain, too, has engaged militarily across the globe in virtually every year since 1914. Most of these conflicts are conducted far away from the gaze of the corporate media.
Reporting of the Habré sentencing has been predictably consistent across all the leading newspapers in the UK and US. Thus the focus has been on the jubilant reactions of a few of the victims of Habré’s torture and rape, on the comments from some of the human rights organisations involved for many years in the campaign to bring the Chad dictator to justice – and on the fact that it was the first time an African country had prosecuted the former head of another African country for massive human rights abuses. Only a tiny part of the reporting has mentioned the West’s role in the genocide. None of the reporting has placed the Chad events in the broader context of US/Western imperial aggression.
The story in the Guardian, by Ruth Maclean, was typical. Some 21 paragraphs were devoted to the report. But only in the last one (appearing almost as an after-thought) was there any mention of US complicity:
The US State department and the CIA propped up Habré, sending him weapons and money in return for fighting their enemy, Muammar Gaddafi.
In a follow-up editorial on 1 June 2016, the Guardian again left mentioning the West’s role until the last paragraph:
Many questions still remain unanswered, including several concerning the responsibility or complicity of Western countries, such as France and the US, which actively supported Habré during the cold war years, turning a blind eye to his methods.
The Telegraphadopted a similar approach. Aislinn Laing, based in Johannesburg, reported briefly:
Mr Habré, 73, is a former rebel leader who took power by force in Chad in 1982 and was then supported by the US and France to remain at the helm as a bulwark to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
Adam Lusher, in the Independent, devoted just eight words to contextualising the trial:
Hissène Habré was once backed by America’s Cold War-era CIA.
In the New York Times, buried in paragraph 24 of a 27-paragraph report by Dionne Searcey are these words:
Mr. Habré took power during a coup that was covertly aided by the United States, and he received weapons and assistance from France, Israel and the United States to keep Libya, to the north of Chad, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, then the Libyan leader, at bay.
Similarly, in Paul Schemm’s 23-paragraph report in the Washington Post, his paragraph 15 reads:
Supported by the United States and France in his wars against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, Habré was accused of killing up to 40,000 people and torturing hundreds of thousands.
Intriguingly, the final paragraph in the Guardian‘s report also included a statement by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, which ‘acknowledged his country’s complicity’:
As a country committed to the respect for human rights and the pursuit of justice, this is also an opportunity for the United States to reflect on, and learn from, our own connections with past events in Chad.
But how hypocritical is this rhetoric given the fact that the US today is still supporting human rights offenders across the globe – including the current dictator of Chad, Idriss Déby. Moreover, the Western powers, the US and France in particular, are using Chad as a major base for their covert military operations in Africa.
A number of newspapers have commented on how the case set an important precedent for holding high-profile human rights abusers to account in Africa. Yet there has been little mention of the extraordinary background. For in June 2003, the US actually warned Belgium that it could lose its status as host to Nato’s headquarters if the Habré case went ahead on the basis of a 1993 law, which allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad. Campaigners determined to bring Habré to justice only then shifted their attention to Africa.
William Blum comments in the introduction to Killing Hope (p. 13) on the US’s secret wars:
With a few exceptions, the interventions never made the headlines or the evening TV news. With some, bits and pieces of the stories have popped up here and there, but rarely brought together to form a cohesive and enlightening whole; the fragments usually appear long after the fact, quietly buried within other stories, just as quietly forgotten…
How perfectly this both predicts and explains the corporate media’s coverage of the Chad dictator, Hissène Habré!
• Richard Lance Keeble, Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln since 2003, has written and edited 36 books. In 2014, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Association for Journalism Education.
Robert Parry says in his latest piece that while the Democrats have been “a reluctant war party” since 1968, by nominating Hillary Clinton, they have once again become an “aggressive war party”.
Noam Chomsky notes that indeed, Hillary Clinton would be more “adventurous”, ie aggressive, than Trump or Sanders in terms of foreign policy, but he and other analysts, like John Pilger, disagree with Parry that the Democrats were, during the period Parry suggests, and perhaps any other, what a rational person would call “reluctant” to kill.
Looking back briefly at a couple of examples of Democratic initiatives, as well as who formed the Democratic party, we see that when it comes to butchering people, the Democrats have never been shy.
John Pilger points out in a recent article that “most of America’s wars (almost all of them against defenceless countries) have been launched not by Republican presidents but by liberal Democrats: Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama.”
Kennedy began the US genocide against the people of Vietnam, demanding bombings and attacks with chemical weapons like napalm, and began a terrorist campaign against Cuba that continues to date.
Johnson, who viewed the Vietnamese people as “barbaric yellow dwarves”, continued the genocide in Vietnam and Indochina.
Bill Clinton, among many horrific acts, committed a major genocide against the people of Iraq, and helped lay the foundation for today’s nuclear war tension by expanding NATO to Russia’s borders.
One of Hillary Clinton’s many crimes was to continue this expansion by supporting a US-backed, neo-Nazi and neo-con integrated coup in Ukraine while referring to the president of Russia as “Hitler” – by far the most aggressive stance towards Russia of any US candidate.
See Pilger’s article for some of Obama’s crimes, which in several ways are uniquely extreme.
Truman defied his military and conservative advisers and many others and carried out mass nuclear executions of civilians as a way to influence the government of Japan (and likely the Soviet Union), then followed his nuclear attacks by further targeting Japanese civilians with the biggest TNT-based mass-execution of civilians in human history up to that point. Executing civilians was a prominent part of his ‘Democratic’ philosophy. He publicly stated that “the German people are beginning to atone for the crimes of the gangsters whom they placed in power and whom they wholeheartedly approved and obediently followed.” His logic, an example of the standard definition of “terrorism”, would suggest that Israelis, who support almost entirely their state’s illegal annexation and massacres of Palestine, should be targeted and killed until they “atone” for what their government is doing, and that US civilians who supported the sanctions against or invasion of Iraq (etc.) should likewise be punished until they “atone”. This is also the principle behind the 9/11 attacks, though US citizens who support terrorism committed by their own state are quick to engage in the “wrong agent” – genetic– fallacy when this is pointed out.
Looking back further than Truman, we find the Democrats comprised the bulk of the pro-chattel-slavery bloc. As noted at Pbs.org, “after the Civil War, most white Southerners opposed Radical Reconstruction and the Republican Party’s support of black civil and political rights. The Democratic Party identified itself as the “white man’s party” and demonized the Republican Party as being “Negro dominated,” even though whites were in control. Determined to re-capture the South, Southern Democrats “redeemed” state after state — sometimes peacefully, other times by fraud and violence. By 1877, when Reconstruction was officially over, the Democratic Party controlled every Southern state. The South remained a one-party region until the Civil Rights movement began in the 1960s. Northern Democrats, most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards blacks, offered no challenge to the discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats.”
Backing up again, we see that in fact the Democratic party was founded by supporters of the sadistic genocidaire Andrew Jackson, who enjoyed making clothing from the skin of people who were exterminated in service of expanding the un-free world.
Are Republicans therefore a superior organization? Of course not. The two parties check and balance each other to maintain and expand the world’s leading terrorist state.
As we can see, it is nothing new or different for the Democrats to be a party of expansionist gangsters. What is remarkable of Clinton, then, is that even against this gory and tyrannical backdrop, she stands out as especially evil, corrupt, and extremist in her US religio-national supremacism. As Professor Johan Galtung notes, two countries today (and occasionally their proxies) continue to wage aggressive war, thanks to their belief that they have been anointed by their gods: the US and Israel. And Hillary Clinton is as fundamentalist as they come.
As Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky, among others, have recently noted, US elections are “a carnival… a way of making people passive, submissive objects”. Rather than petering out and cowering to the Democratic party, Chomsky says, Sanders supporters should “sustain the ongoing movement, which [should] pay attention to the elections for 10 minutes but meanwhile do other things.” However, at the moment, “it’s the other way around. It’s all focused on the election. It’s just part of the ideology. The way you keep people out of activism is get them all excited about the carnival that goes on every four years and then go home, which has happened over and over.”
Robert Barsocchini is an internationally published author who focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. Updates on Twitter. Author’s pamphlet ‘The Agility of Tyranny: Historical Roots of Black Lives Matter’.
Saudi Arabia is set to receive 24 Hellfire-armed AH-6i Little Bird helicopters from US aeronautics contractor Boeing, a sale that would have been banned had the UN not removed the Kingdom from their war crimes against children list.
On Wednesday, Boeing announced that they will begin delivering AH-6i Little Bird light attack and reconnaissance helicopters to Saudi Arabia by the end of the month, as the aircraft begin to come off the production line in Mesa, Arizona by the end of this week.
The contract faced uncertainty late last week when the United Nations included Saudi Arabia on a blacklist as part of their annual report on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC), for their role in indiscriminate bombings of schools and hospitals in Yemen.
Pursuant to the Leahy Law, the US Department of State and Department of Defense are prohibited from providing military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights, precisely what the United Nations initially certified in their original report. This prohibition extends to approval of foreign arms sales by private US contractors, which would stop the lucrative sale of US weapons to Riyadh.
However, the United Nations announced on Monday, after feverish lobbying by the Saudi envoy to the UN, in conjunction with US and UK officials, to temporarily remove Saudi Arabia from the blacklist, pending further investigation of the statistics provided in the report.
Many interpret the purported temporary move to delete Saudi Arabia from the list of child-killers as a permanent step, including the Saudi delegation, which loudly announced that the decision was “final.”
With human rights atrocities ignored for the sake of political and economic expediency, the path is now paved for the light attack helicopter to make its debut in the skies above Yemen. The Saudi-led mission to combat the Houthi political opposition faction and prop up Saudi-freindly leadership in Yemen has the full support of the US and the UK, despite consistent reports of war crimes conducted by Kingdom forces.
The combat helicopter is said to have a maximum speed of 175 mph, with a range of 267 miles. The aircraft is typically armed with Hellfire missiles, Hydra 70 rockets, air-to-air Stingers, automatic grenade launchers, and five high-caliber machine guns.
Reknowned economist M. Shahid Alamoffers this excellent critique of Noam Chomsky’s defective analysis of the relative influence of Oil versus the Israel lobby over US foreign policy: … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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