Iran and Hezbollah have troops fighting ISIL, therefore the enemy of the US’s enemy is no longer an enemy, but now a friend – plus, this is the day after the Israeli election!
‘An annual security report submitted recently to the US Senate by James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, removed both Iran and Hezbollah from the list of terrorism threats to the United States for the first time in years…’
via US removes Iran and Hezbollah from list of terror threats.
Ali Abunimah writes about the Bibi victory in the Israeli elections…
But what has distinguished Netanyahu is that he strips away the opportunities for the so-called “international community” to hide its complicity with Israel’s ugly crimes behind a charade of a “peace process.”
Moreover Netanyahu’s open alliance with the most racist, white supremacist, Islamophobic and bigoted elements of the North American and European right – his speech to Congress earlier this month was a manifestation of this – place Israel in the correct ideological camp. Israel can no longer practice apartheid at home, while falsely presenting itself as a beacon of liberalism around the world.
In short, Netanyahu’s re-election is like the “Nutrition Facts” label on a box of junk food: it tells you about the toxic ingredients inside.
via Why I’m relieved Netanyahu won | The Electronic Intifada.
And furthermore, now that Bibi displayed his real face in saying that there will never be a Palestinian state as long as he is Prime Minister, at last!, the Palestinians will no longer feel required to take part in fake ‘peace talks.’ — At least until Bibi leaves office.
‘In an op-ed for Spiegel Online, Gesine Schwan, a former presidential candidate, said Germany "needs to clean before its own door" when it comes to its Nazi past, noting that victims and descendants have longer memories than perpetrators and descendents.
"It looks awkward when well-off Germany demands the repayment of debts from poor Greece but is itself not prepared to even speak about the repayment of a forced loan by Nazi Germany on Greece," she wrote.
[….] Greece is seeking compensation on three accounts – general war reparations, a claim resulting from a massacre of 214 people in the Greek village of Distomo in 1944 and the repayment of the forced loan that the Nazis got from the Greek central bank in 1943. The total amounts to hundreds of billions of euros.
Germany, for its part, says it has honoured its obligations, having paid Greece 115m Deutchmarks in 1960. It also argues that the matter was closed by the 1990 ‘two plus four treaty’ signed by West and East Germany, as well as the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the US.
But this has been disputed in a 2013 report by the German parliament’s research service which argued that these agreements do not necessarily fully close the matter…’
via Prominent German politicians side with Greece on war reparations.
The Corrie Family writes:
‘…Our family’s legal options in Israel are nearly exhausted, but our search for justice for Rachel goes forward. Back in Washington DC, we have come full circle. We ask again that U.S. officials address their responsibility to U.S. citizens and to all civilians whose lives are impacted and cut short by military actions supported with U.S. taxpayer funding. We ask that they determine what to do when a promise from a key ally’s head of state to our own goes unfulfilled. March 16, 2003, was the very worst day of our lives. Our family deserves a clear and truthful explanation for how what happened to Rachel that day could occur, and to know there is some consequence to those responsible. Rachel deserves this…’
via THE 12th ANNIVERSARY OF RACHEL CORRIE’S STAND IN GAZA – FAMILY STATEMENT | The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice.
Priyamvada Gopal writes:
‘…the announcement came as coalition ministers George Osborne and William Hague visited India to hustle for lucrative arms contracts, emerging triumphantly with a £250m deal to supply missiles to the Indian air force and hoping to persuade the former jewel in the imperial crown to buy the partly British-made Eurofighter Typhoon jet.
This plainly opportunistic move has elicited accusations of "false worship" from Gandhi’s descendants. Hague’s glutinous praise for Gandhi’s commitment to non-violence as "a legacy that is as relevant today as it was during his life", while selling killing machines to his countrymen, is certainly specious. Yet the hawkish rightwing Indian regime these ministers are cosying up to is, with even greater irony, appropriating Gandhi to sanitise its own sectarian past. In Britain as in India, the canonisation of Gandhi has become the perfect vehicle for sanctimonious official rhetoric that obscures the links between capitalism’s military-industrial complex, social hierarchies and state violence…’
via Does Gandhi really belong in Parliament Square? | Priyamvada Gopal | Comment is free | The Guardian.
‘In his new exposé of the National Security Agency entitled Body of Secrets, author James Bamford highlights a set of proposals on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff codenamed OPERATION NORTHWOODS. This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the JCS to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Northwoods…’
via http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/index.html
also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
screenshot from this .pdf
Ironically, the CIA coup in Chile was September 11, 1973
A member of Chilean dictator’s Augusto Pinochet’s secret police, who is implicated in executions and torture that occurred weeks after a United States-backed coup in 1973, taught at a Pentagon university for thirteen years. But, in spite of allegations, State Department and Pentagon officials allowed him to hold a visa and teach in the US, according to a report from McClatchy Newspapers.
The criminal court in Santiago has charged Jaime Garcia Covarrubias for being the “mastermind” behind the executions of seven people. He is also accused of sexual torture and said by his accusers to have a “penchant for horsewhips and perversity.” An investigative judge ordered him to remain in Chile in January 2014.
Herman Carrasco, who is now a real estate agent, was interviewed by McClatchy reporters and described how he had been tortured by Covarrubias between October and November 1973. The torture occurred “twice a day.”
“We were submerged in feces,” Carrasco recalled. “They stuck rifle barrels in our anuses.”
via Former Member of Pinochet’s Secret Police, Accused of Torture & Murder, Taught for Pentagon for 12 Years | The Dissenter.
Still going strong… http://wikileaks.org/
Reminder: Venezuela never actually threatened the the USA.
‘The United States on Monday declared Venezuela a national security threat and ordered sanctions against seven officials in the worst diplomatic dispute with the oil-rich country since socialist President Nicolas Maduro took office in 2013.
President Barack Obama issued and signed the executive order…’
via U.S. declares Venezuela a threat, sanctions top officials | Reuters.
Trevor Timm writes:
‘…Much of this was Top Secret, and some was SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) higher than Top Secret – and he admitted in his plea to lying to the FBI about his leaks, knowing that doing so was a crime in itself.
Despite the gravity of Petreaus’ actions, he agreed to a single misdemeanor guilty plea for improperly “retaining” classified information, and prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of two years probation and no jail time.
Compare that to the actions of Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years for leaking classified information. As Ellsberg noted: “Chelsea Manning had access to SCI every day… where she worked in Iraq. She chose to disclose none of it, nothing higher than Secret”.
[….] Petraeus is apparently an exception only because his leaks came to the attention of the FBI inadvertently, and they involved a large volume of exceptionally sensitive information.)
The government had the chance to hold Petreaus out as an example on the same felony Espionage Act charges they’ve leveled (unfairly) against every conscientious whistleblower they’ve indicted. Their answer? Leaking should no longer be a felony. Let’s make sure we hold them to that, and not only for CIA Directors….’
via Petraeus won't serve a day in jail for his leaks. Edward Snowden shouldn't either | Comment is free | The Guardian.
‘An average of 545 people killed by local and state law enforcement officers in the US went uncounted in the country’s most authoritative crime statistics every year for almost a decade, according to a report released on Tuesday.
The first-ever attempt by US record-keepers to estimate the number of uncounted “law enforcement homicides” exposed previous official tallies as capturing less than half of the real picture. The new estimate – an average of 928 people killed by police annually over eight recent years, compared to 383 in published FBI data – amounted to a more glaring admission than ever before of the government’s failure to track how many people police kill….’
via Police killed more than twice as many people as reported by US government | US news | The Guardian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Txrcpl49GQ
An armored vehicle ran over a six-year-old boy’s legs: $11,000. A jingle truck was “blown up by mistake”: $15,000. A controlled detonation broke eight windows in a mosque: $106. A boy drowned in an anti-tank ditch: $1,916. A 10-ton truck ran over a cucumber crop: $180. A helicopter “shot bullets hitting and killing seven cows”: $2,253. Destruction of 200 grape vines, 30 mulberry trees and one well: $1,317. A wheelbarrow full of broken mirrors: $4,057.
A child who died in a combat operation: $2,414.
These are among the payments that the United States has made to ordinary Afghans over the course of American military operations in the country, according to databases covering thousands of such transactions obtained by The Intercept under the Freedom of Information Act.
via Our Condolences: How the U.S. Paid For Death and Damage in Afghanistan.
Noam Chomsky writes:
‘…we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops.
The prime target was South Vietnam. The aggression later spread to the North, then to the remote peasant society of northern Laos, and finally to rural Cambodia, which was bombed at the stunning level of all allied air operations in the Pacific region during World War II, including the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this, Henry Kissinger’s orders were being carried out — “anything that flies on anything that moves” — a call for genocide that is rare in the historical record. Little of this is remembered. Most was scarcely known beyond narrow circles of activists….’
via The hysterical American decline – Salon.com.
Graffiti artist Banksy goes to Egypt and arrives in Israeli besieged Gaza Palestine via a tunnel. Banksy says more in 1:55 minutes than all CNNNBCCBSABCPBS reports in the previous 12 months, I think. Well done Mr Banksy, I hope we see more videos of yours from occupied Palestine.
Tom Engelhardt writes:
‘…Washington’s grimly named Predator and Reaper drones have been hunting their prey in the backlands of the planet 24 hours a day for more than a decade now. Thousands of people have been wiped out, including women, children, and wedding parties, as well as numerous significant and insignificant figures in terror outfits of every sort. And yet in not one of those countries has the situation improved in any significant way in terms of U.S. policy goals. In most of them it has grown worse and the drones have been a factor in such developments, alienating whole populations on the ground below. This has been obvious for years to counterinsurgency experts. But a reconsideration of these drone wars is beyond the pale in Washington. Drone assassination is now a sacrosanct act of the American state, part of a “global” war 13 years old and ongoing. No one in any position of power, now or in the immediate future, is going to consider flying them back.
The CIA has sometimes been called the president’s private army. Today, it’s running most (but not all) of Washington’s drone campaigns and so those robotic lone wolves could be considered the president’s private air force. In the process, the twenty-first-century White House has been officially and proudly turned into an assassin’s lair and don’t expect that to change in 2016 or 2020 either…’
via Tomgram: Engelhardt, Walking Back the American Twenty-First Century? | TomDispatch.
Tedd Rall asks
‘When’s the last time the United States bombed a non-Muslim country?’
via In the Propaganda War Against ISIS, US Flails.
Poland is a country with Rule of Law, America not so much
‘Poland will comply with a court order to pay $262,000 to two Guantánamo Bay inmates, foreign minister Grzegorz Schetyna said on Wednesday, as reparations for the country’s role in hosting a CIA black site where the men were tortured. “We have to do it,” Schetyna said in an interview on Trójka Polish Radio, “because we are a country that abides laws.” He said the money would be paid out within a month…’
via Poland agrees to pay reparations to Guantánamo detainees | World news | The Guardian.
Tariq Ali [tv / web] writes: ‘…Therefore the least departure from capitalist norms on any continent, however moderately expressed or practiced, arouses the frenzy of the privileged and their retinues. Fear of the unexpected — uprisings, electoral revolts that challenge the status quo, street protests by the young, peasant jacqueries — compels the global elites to depend, in the last instance, on the threat or use of US military strength to settle every dispute in their favor. This creates a level playing field for the global rich alone, regardless of the resulting slaughter. Baghdad, Helmand, Tripoli, Kinshasa tell the tale.
Not since the interwar years has conflict been incited so shamelessly, and with such frightening frivolity. The combination of unchallengeable military power and the political intoxication it produces sweeps all else to the side. What the whole world knows to be false is proclaimed by the United States to be the truth, with media networks, vassals, and acolytes obediently in tow. The triumph of crude force is portrayed as a mark of intelligence or courage; criminal arrogance is described as moral energy.
Of course, such aggression doesn’t always succeed politically and, in most cases, the chaos it unleashes is much worse than what existed before. But the economic gains are palpable: the privatization of Libyan and Iraqi oil are the most salient examples.
via How to End Empire | Jacobin.
I am not sure that the imperialists got what they hoped for in these places – Oil and Gas are flowing from Iraq and Libya, but not even at the rates of the ‘best times’ of the prior regimes. Unless he is saying that privatization is the only point and they hope for extraction later after the natives stop resisting.
If I was a Democrat, I’d accuse Jeb of spitting in the face of the active duty US soldiers fighting his brother’s wars today.
‘Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) isn’t interested in talking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially as it relates to his brother, former President George W. Bush. “I won’t talk about the past,” Bush said on Friday when a reporter asked him about an upcoming foreign policy speech in Chicago…’
via Jeb Bush On Iraq And Afghanistan Wars: ‘I Won’t Talk About The Past’.
‘Explore the $57 million network fueling Islamophobia in the United States.’
Start here » https://islamophobianetwork.com/
‘This in-depth investigation conducted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund reveals a small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts guiding an effort that reaches millions of Americans through effective advocates, media partners, and grassroots organizing. This spreading of hate and misinformation primarily starts with six key people and their organizations, which are sustained by funding from a clutch of key foundations.’
» https://islamophobianetwork.com/about
‘…What’s hard to get one’s mind around is that everyone who’s singing this tune—the police, the wife, the prosecutor—seems to think that it’s reassuring. Getting blown away by a neighbor just because he’s pissed off at you for some ridiculous reason has become the equivalent of a natural disaster in our country, with our gun culture. It’s got nothing to do with the killer’s ideology, or with the victim’s identity. That’s the thinking. And, with this “parking” alibi, we’re being asked to imagine that these killings are a private tragedy, not some big public deal—not terrorism, not even like terrorism. We’re being told to believe that the vigilante killing of three young Americans is socially and politically meaningless.
It seems we are also supposed to be relieved by the fact that Hicks, who carried a gun to earlier confrontations with his neighbors, was not a religious fanatic. Are we then supposed to ignore the fact that he was an anti-religious fanatic, who was said to have taunted the women he later killed for dressing according to their traditions and beliefs? We are told that he was in favor of gay marriage, as if that negated his militant intolerance of others. He spent most of his time on Facebook heaping contempt on Christians, who are more numerous by far in Hicks’s neck of the woods than Muslims. And yet with law-enforcement sounding like Hicks-family spin doctors, we are being urged to consider this murderer as a figure of all-embracing American assimilation—a man who did not care who they were but hated them as he would hate anyone and everyone, equally and without fear or favor, for the way they parked…’
via The Chapel Hill Massacre Blues – The New Yorker.
