Sick Sophistry – BBC News On The Afghan Hospital ‘Mistakenly’ Bombed By The United States

In Media Lens ALERTS 2015

One of the defining features of the corporate media is that Western crimes are ignored or downplayed. The US bombing of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on the night of October 3, is an archetypal example.

At least twenty-two people were killed when a United States Air Force AC-130 repeatedly attacked the hospital with five strafing runs over the course of more than an hour, despite MSF pleas to Afghan, US and Nato officials to call off the attack. The hospital’s main building, which contains the emergency operating room and recovery rooms, was heavily damaged. Dave Lindorff noted:

‘the hospital was deliberately set ablaze by incendiary weapons, and the people inside not incinerated were killed by a spray of bullets and anti-personnel flechettes.’

Lindorff added:

‘The AC-130 gunship is not a precision targeting weapon, but a weapons system designed to spread death over a wide swath.’

Shockingly, MSF had already informed US military forces of the precise coordinates of the hospital in order to prevent any attacks. Indeed, the hospital is:

‘a well-known and long-established institution with a distinctive shape operating in a city that until recently was under full [Afghan] government control. That the US/NATO command did not clearly know the function of that structure is inconceivable.’

MSF were unequivocal in their condemnation of the American attack. The hospital was ‘intentionally targeted’ in ‘a premeditated massacre’.  It was, they said, a ‘war crime’. The organisation rejected US assurances of three inquiries – by the US, Nato and the Afghan government. Instead, MSF demanded an independent international investigation.

In the days following the attack, the US changed its official story several times. At one point, as Glenn Greenwald observes, the dominant narrative from the US and its Afghan allies was that the bombing had not been an accident, but that it had been justified because the Taliban had been using the hospital as a base; an outrageous claim that MSF vehemently rejected. It was even reported that an American tank had later forced its way into the hospital compound, potentially destroying evidence of the war crime that had just taken place.

Yes, the bombing was reported in the ‘mainstream’ media; sometimes with harrowing footage of ruined hospital corridors and rooms. Hospital beds were even shown where patients had burned to death. But the US bombing did not receive the extensive headline coverage and editorial outrage that it deserved.

If you are unsure of that, just imagine the response of the British media if it had been a Russian gunship that had bombed a hospital with the loss of 22 lives, despite pleas from doctors to call off the attack. Western leaders would have instantly condemned the Russian bombing as a ‘war crime’, and the corporate media would have taken their lead from the pronouncements coming out of the offices of power in Washington and London.

By contrast, we have not found a single editorial in any UK national newspaper condemning the US bombing of the hospital or calling for an independent investigation. This is one more example of the dramatic subservience of the corporate media to the state and indeed its long-term complicity in state crimes against humanity.

In the meantime, with nothing to say on Kunduz, the Guardian has found space to publish editorials onhoverboards and the Great British Bakeoff, as well as Guardian editor Katharine Viner’s ‘grilling’ of George Osborne at the Tory party conference. To compound the paper’s ignominy, it still proudly carries Tony Blair in its Comment section where it describes him merely as ‘a former British prime minister’, rather than the notorious and unpopular war criminal he so clearly is. That accurate description is only emphasised by the weekend’s revelations of a memo written by Colin Powell, then George Bush’s US Secretary of State, that Blair had pledged his support for a US invasion of Iraq fully one year in advance, even while telling Parliament and the country that a ‘diplomatic solution’ was still being sought.

 Sopel’s ‘Mistake’

On BBC News at Ten on October 15, 2015, BBC North America correspondent Jon Sopel told viewers over footage of the ravaged Kunduz hospital that it had been ‘mistakenly bombed by the Americans’. Not intentionally bombed, as MSF were saying, but ‘mistakenly bombed’. BBC News were thereby adopting the Pentagon perspective presented earlier by General John Campbell, the US senior commander in Afghanistan, when he claimed that:

‘A hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a protected medical facility’.

In fact, the US has done so before, many times. In November 2003, the first target of the huge American ground assault on Fallujah, following several weeks of bombing, was the city’s General Hospital. This was a ‘war crime’, Noam Chomsky noted, and it was even depicted on the front page of the New York Times, but without it being labelled or recognised as such by the paper:

‘the front page of the world’s leading newspaper was cheerfully depicting war crimes for which the political leadership could be sentenced to severe penalties under U.S. law, the death penalty if patients ripped from their beds and manacled on the floor happened to die as a result.’

Going further back in time, US veterans of the Vietnam war have reported that hospitals in Cambodia and Laos were ‘routinely listed’ among targets to be struck by American forces. In 1973, Newsweekmagazine quoted a former US army intelligence analyst saying that:

‘The bigger the hospital, the better it was’.

And now, in the case of the MSF hospital in Kunduz, Associated Press reported that:

‘US analysts knew Afghan site was hospital’.

Moreover, it has since emerged that the American crew of the AC-130 gunship even questionedwhether it was legal to attack the hospital.

Our repeated challenges on Twitter to Sopel and his BBC News editor Paul Royall were ignored. Is this really how senior BBC professionals should behave when publicly questioned about a serious breach of impartiality? Simply deign not to answer?

However, one of our readers emailed Sopel and did extract a remarkable response from the BBC North America correspondent which was kindly forwarded to us.

Sopel wrote in his email:

‘At this stage whether the bombing of the hospital in Kunduz was deliberate or accidental is the subject of an investigation – and I know there are doubts about the independence of the inquiry – but what it most certainly WAS was mistaken. Given the outrage the bombing has provoked, the humiliating apology it has forced the US into, the PR disaster it has undoubtedly been, how can anyone describe it as anything other than mistaken? If I had used the word accidentally you might have had a point.’

But this is, at best, disingenuous nonsense from Sopel. Most people watching his piece, and hearing him say that the hospital had been ‘mistakenly bombed by the Americans’, would have assumed he meant that the Americans had not intended to bomb the hospital rather than that bombing the hospital was misguided.

As we saw above, the notion that US forces did not know the target was a hospital is the Pentagon propaganda claim, and is not the view of MSF. Moreover, it contradicts the evidence that was both available at the time of Sopel’s BBC News report and what has since come to light (that the US aircrew actually questioned the legality of the strike on a hospital). Christopher Stokes, general director of MSF, told Associated Press that the US bombing was ‘no mistake’.

‘The extensive, quite precise destruction of this hospital … doesn’t indicate a mistake. The hospital was repeatedly hit’.

The rest of Sopel’s remarks in the exchange are irrelevant (the bravery of war journalists), verging on cringeworthy (his proud support of MSF with a standing order).

Sopel’s attempt to exploit ‘the outrage’, ‘the humiliating apology’ and ‘the PR disaster’ to justify his use of ‘mistakenly bombed’ is desperate sophistry. Is he really trying to say that a war crime is ‘mistaken’ because it is a ‘PR disaster’, requiring a ‘humiliating apology’?

Perhaps the airstrike was a ‘mistake’ in much the same way that the killing of eight Afghan schoolboys by US-led troops in 2009 was a ‘mistake’? This was a ‘mistake’ that Nato brushed away with payments of $2,000 for each dead child, in a kind of macabre ‘fire sale’.

Perhaps the airstrike was a ‘mistake’ in much the same way as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in the eyes of Bridget Kendall, the BBC diplomatic correspondent. She declared on BBC News at Six:

‘There’s still bitter disagreement over invading Iraq. Was it justified or a disastrous miscalculation?’ (BBC1, March 20, 2006)

That the Iraq invasion was, in fact, an illegal and immoral war of aggression – indeed, the ‘supreme international crime’ judged by the Nuremberg standard of war crimes – was not a permissible description for BBC News.

But that is the ideological norm shaping corporate media output and ‘mainstream’ debate. Western political and military leaders may occasionally make ‘mistakes’ or ‘disastrous miscalculations’. But their essential intent is always honourable: to ‘keep the Taliban at bay’ (Sopel again), to destroy Islamic State or to ‘bring peace to the Middle East’.

We asked John Pilger to comment on Jon Sopel’s report for BBC News and his subsequent remarks on email. Pilger told us (via email, October 19, 2015):

‘Serious journalism is about trying to set the record straight with compelling evidence. What is striking about Jon Sopel’s report is that he offers not a glimpse of journalistic evidence to support his assertion that the US attack on the hospital was “mistaken” – thus calling into question facts presented by MSF: facts that have not been refuted and he makes no attempt to refute. Neither is the dissembling by the US military challenged by Sopel. Instead, he is “certain” the attack was mistaken. What is the basis of his “certainty”? He doesn’t say; and he clearly feels under no compulsion to say. Instead, in full defensive cry, he tells us what an experienced frontline reporter he is, implying that his word is enough. Well, I have reported more wars than Sopel has had White House briefings, and I know – as he knows – that journalism of this kind is no more than a feeble echo of the official line. He does reveal his agency by telling us – quite unabashed — that President Obama has “very little option” but to continue his campaign of destruction in Afghanistan. Some might call this apologetics; actually, it’s anti-journalism.’

Perhaps it is not surprising that the header photo at the top of Sopel’s Twitter page should show him listening respectfully to US President Obama. The tragic irony is that Obama, the 2009 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has just committed a war crime in bombing Médecins Sans Frontières, the 1999 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

DC

Suggested Action

If you decide to contact a journalist in response to our alert, please keep the tone civil. We do not condone abusive language.

Jon Sopel, BBC North America correspondent
Email: jon.sopel@bbc.co.uk
Twitter: @BBCJonSopel

Paul Royall, editor of both BBC News at Six and News at Ten
Email: paul.royall@bbc.co.uk
Twitter: @paulroyall

Please forward any replies to us:
editor@medialens.org

One Secret Text Gives Any Police State Agency Total Control Of Your Phone – Even When It’s Off

By Jay Syrmopoulos

Whistleblower Edward Snowden, in an interview with the BBC’s ‘Panorama,’ spoke in detail about a stunning array of cyber spying tools used by the U.K.’s GCHQ to hack smartphones with a single text message. The spyware package is named after the little blue cartoon characters; the Smurfs.

“It’s called an ‘exploit’,” Snowden said. “That’s a specially crafted message that’s texted to your number like any other text message but when it arrives at your phone it’s hidden from you. It doesn’t display. You paid for [the phone] but whoever controls the software owns the phone,” he added.

Smartphone users can do “very little” to stop security services getting “total control” over their devices, according to Snowden.

The “Smurf Suite” package arrives by text messages, without users ever being aware of the message or its payload, as the phone is not altered in any way, according to Snowden.

Dreamy Smurf: A power management tool, which allows the phone to be powered on and off without the user knowing.

Nosey Smurf: A ‘hotmic’ tool that allows the microphone on a phone to be turned on, even if the phone is powered off.

Tracker Smurf: A geo-location tool that tracks a person with much greater precision than the typical triangulation of cellphone towers.

Paranoid Smurf: Covers the tracks of the breach of phone security, as to not allow even a phone security expert to recognize that the device has been tampered with upon inspection.

Snowden said the spy agency could see “who you call, what you’ve texted, the things you’ve browsed, the list of your contacts, the places you’ve been, the wireless networks that your phone is associated with.”

“And they can do much more. They can photograph you,” he said.

According to a report in the Daily Dot:

The NSA, which Snowden said provided “tasking and direction” for GCHQ’s use of these tools, reportedly has comparable mobile surveillance capabilities, but it is unknown if the U.S. agency deploys it through a hidden text message like its British counterpart.

The NSA and its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance exploited flaws in a popular mobile app to gain access to phones running that software and searched for ways to hack into popular app markets. GCHQ and the NSA also tried for years to break into Blackberry devices, with an analyst celebrating their eventual success in March 2010 by writing “Champagne!”

Snowden, who has been living in exile in Russia since June 2013, has been charged by the U.S. with espionage and theft of government property after leaking documents to the media about widespread digital surveillance.

During the interview Snowden said that he would like to eventually return to the U.S., and would be willing to serve prison time for his massive data breach, but that he would not be willing to do so if he was being charged under the Espionage Act.

The heroic acts of Edward Snowden stand as a testament as to what it means to be truly willing to sacrifice for an ideal.

This little device delivers turnkey Internet privacy and security (Ad)

Image Credit

Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism.

‘Classified Speech’: Purdue Destroys Video Of Presentation On Snowden Documents

By Kevin Gosztola | Shadowproof 

Published in partnership with Shadowproof.

There are numerous examples of American colleges or universities invoking “civility” to stifle free speech, especially speech around the issue of Palestinian human rights. Multiple instances exist where students have demanded particular speech or acts of expression, which make them uncomfortable, be controlled or suppressed. On a lesser scale, there also appears to be a trend toward constraining “classified speech.”

“Classified speech” is speech containing or relying upon information, which is public but the United States government has not declassified yet. Colleges or universities that are part of the American security industrial-complex have “facility security clearances” or other obligations they have agreed to follow so administrators can maintain the stature of being a place that conducts classified U.S. government research.

Yet, the result of such arrangements is what happened to Washington Post journalist Barton Gellman, who produced Pulitzer Prize-winning work on documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Gellman was invited to Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, to give a keynote presentation on Snowden and “national security journalism in the age of surveillance.” The presentation was part of a colloquium called “Dawn or Doom” on the “risks and rewards of emerging technologies.” It was live streamed, and Gellman was promised a link for sharing his presentation after the event.

Purdue University emphasized in its description of the event that Gellman would offer a “fresh account of the disclosures and their aftershocks, drawing upon hundreds of hours of work with the classified NSA archive and scores of hours of interviews with Snowden.”

As Gellman has recounted, Purdue “wiped all copies” of his video and slides from university servers on the grounds that Gellman “displayed classified documents briefly on screen.”

“A breach report was filed with the university’s Research Information Assurance Officer, also known as the Site Security Officer, under the terms of Defense Department Operating Manual 5220.22-M. I am told that Purdue briefly considered, among other things, whether to destroy the projector I borrowed, lest contaminants remain,” Gellman added.

Gellman recognizes under a Pentagon agreement Purdue had to appear shocked when “spillage” was discovered at his presentation. The university ultimately determined three slides, which covered about five minutes in his presentation, tainted the talk so much that the entire keynote had to be erased so no student at Purdue would ever see the “breach.”

In a statement provided to Inside Higher Education, the legal counsel for Purdue, Steve Schultz, defended the decision to wipe all copies of Gellman’s presentation:

We don’t view this episode as any sort of compromise of Purdue’s commitment to free and open inquiry. It was the university’s desire to raise awareness of Mr. Gellman’s area of expertise that brought him to campus in the first place. When the classified nature of some material was confirmed, Purdue’s security officer made a judgment call, based on a reading of regulations, that we shouldn’t disseminate it. Purdue’s DSS industrial security representative confirmed the propriety of this assessment. In the course of communicating the decision to the technical team, the entire speech was removed from the website. We have acknowledged that perhaps a better way to comply with the law would have been to block only the classified information in question. But we don’t make the laws; we only do our best to follow them.

This overzealous attitude was exhibited by attendees at Gellman’s presentation. Gellman was specifically asked if he had shown documents classified “TS/SCI” or “top secret/sensitive compartmented information.” No one asks a journalist that question unless they have a background in classified intelligence work and are concerned about protecting the sanctity of U.S. secrets.

The same questioner wanted to know if the NSA had declassified the documents in question. Gellman explained they were still classified and, for the most part, government employees have been informed they should not look at them. He added the government will not declassify information because it does not want someone else to decide what is classified and what is not. However, that ties them up in some “pretty bad knots.”

This was not a good enough answer. One post-doctoral research engineer asked a follow-up about whether documents were “unclassified.” Gellman answered, “No, they’re classified still.”

As became evident, a number of people in the audience (possibly “junior security rangers” on faculty and staff) had no interest in exploring the issue of over-classification or how the government absurdly claims to still have control over information after it has leaked. They were uninterested in debating the extent to which agencies fight to maintain an alternative reality among government employees.

This kind of zeal is not entirely new. It has been seen in response to the Snowden’s disclosures and the documents from Chelsea Manning, which were published by WikiLeaks.

A military defense university established by Congress and known as the Defense Acquisition Universityblocked access to the Post in order to prevent trainees and workers from exposure to “classified material being released.”

A State Department official reportedly warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) that students applying for jobs in the federal government could see their prospects jeopardized if they were found to be reading and sharing documents from WikiLeaks or talking about WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter. (The university later reversed its position.)

But, most often, the zeal has been reserved for personnel working inside government agencies, like the Defense Department, which blocked The Guardian to shield employees from NSA documents, or the Library of Congress, which blocked access to WikiLeaks.

In fact, one of the oldest research libraries in the country reacted in a manner very similar to Purdue. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) made a recommendation, and the Library of Congress claimed to be following “applicable law” that required them to “protect classified information.” They went along with the notion that “unauthorized disclosures of classified documents do not alter the documents’ classified status or automatically result in declassification of the documents.”

Such a posture toward information is less about security and more about loyalty. Students and faculty engaged in classified government research, who make up a very small part of the university, act as missionaries guarding against anyone who violates the blessedness of information marked classified by anyone from the vast security apparatus with such power.

Not only does a policy like this empower students and faculty to challenge a journalist for engaging in investigative journalism, but it makes it possible to take concrete action to effectively police speech.

As Gellman reflected, “Now the security apparatus claims jurisdiction over the campus (“facility”) at large. The university finds itself “sanitizing” a conference that has nothing to do with any government contract. Where does it stop? Suppose a professor wants to teach a network security course, or a student wants to write a foreign policy paper, that draws on the rich public record made available by Snowden and Chelsea Manning? Those cases will be hard to distinguish from mine.”

Or, take it a step farther. The documents are not classified to the government. The information contained in the document is classified.

If the policy is fully embraced by Purdue University is applied, when any of that information is discussed with a reporter and is published, it has now technically a “breach” that the university should protect itself from because the government did not classify the information. That means any major newspapers covering national security stories should probably be censored and/or removed entirely from campus.

Such a policy is incomprehensible and, contrary to the view of Purdue’s legal counsel, toxic to any institution claiming to value academic freedom and open inquiry. Nonetheless, it is what institutions think they must adopt in order to protect access and prestige, as a part of the American security industrial-complex.

The CIA in Guatemala: A chilling account of death and misery by a brave woman…

This is a video by Jennifer Harbury, an American whose late Guatemalan husband, a Mayan indigenous activist, was “disappeared” by the military. After hunger strikes and investigations, she learned that Efraín Bámaca Velásquez had been tortured and then killed — and that the CIA knew all about it. Her story is a powerful one..

These Toxic Chemicals Found To ‘Wreck Your Hormones’

$170 BILLION spent on managing exposure in EU

A new study is attempting to measure the effects of toxic endocrine disrupting chemicals and understand their long term impact in the realms of finance, the environment, and personal health. What the researchers found was startling to say the least.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, looked at the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals in European countries and how the following health risks would translate into economic costs for those who become sick or disabled as a result.

“Global experts in this field concluded that infertility and male reproductive dysfunctions, birth defects, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and neurobehavioral and learning disorders were among the conditions than can be attributed in part to exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). The €157 billion estimate is conservative, and represents 1.23 percent of Europe’s gross domestic product (GDP). These costs may actually be as high as €270 billion ($359 billion), or 2% of GDP,” the study states.

Endocrine disruptors exist in a broad variety of products in today’s society. Most receipts, food packaging, plastic bottles, some money, lining inside of cans, and even toilet paper contain one or more of these types of chemicals that have adverse effects on the body and its ability to produce and regulate hormones. When a frozen package is thrown into a microwave or hot water, this also greatly increases the potency of these chemicals. The most dangerous of these, however, probably comes in the form of pesticides that are sprayed onto crops and eventually end up in the food and water supply.

When examining the health concerns associated with endocrine disruptors, researchers noted the link between prenatal exposure to these chemicals and the onset of developmental disorders in the mother’s children, and how those would result in further economic costs on a large scale. Endocrine disrupting chemicals can imbalance the hormones in a pregnant mother and may also be responsible for infertility and other pregnancy complications.

Read: EU Nations Insist we Raise Awareness About Toxic Chemicals

These exposures have been associated with everything from mental disorders, to infertility, to obesity. Because of the negative effects on the general well-being of individuals, researchers estimated that up to $170 billion is being spent managing the immediate and long term effects that these chemicals have on personal health. Though the study was limited to European countries, the implication is equal if not greater in other countries including the United States.

It’s important to deal with the root cause of a problem instead of accepting that the effects of this toxic contamination are somehow an inevitable conclusion. This would save not only money, but a lot of hardship in the area of personal health.

“The analysis demonstrates just how staggering the cost of widespread endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure is to society,” said Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Environmental Medicine & Population Health at NYU Langone Medical Center, who led a team of eighteen researchers across eight countries in this landmark initiative. “This research crystalizes more than three decades of lab and population-based studies of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the EU.”

JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and others have discussed withholding campaign contributions as punishment for populist rhetoric of progressive senator

by Jon Queally,

Sen. Elizebath Warren has reportedly generated enough ire among Wall Street banks to have them considering a coordinated campaign of collective punishment against her fellow Democrats. (Photo: file)

What could she possibly be doing right?

According to exlusive reporting by Reuters on Friday, big Wall Street banks are so upset with Elizabeth Warren’s call to “un-rig” the economy and proposals for stronger financial regulations that discussions are underway about withholding campaign contributions to Senate Democrats as a form of “symbolic” protest against the freshman senator from Massachusetts.

Citing sources familiar with the situation, representatives of some of the nation’s largest banks—including Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America—have actively considered putting pressure on the Democratic establishment by making a coordinated threat to withold campaign contributions unless the populist rhetoric coming from Sen. Warren and her colleague from Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown, is toned down.

Reports Reuters:

Bank officials said the idea of withholding donations was not discussed at a meeting of the four banks in Washington but it has been raised in one-on-one conversations between representatives of some of them. However, there was no agreement on coordinating any action, and each bank is making its own decision, they said.

The amount of money at stake, a maximum of $15,000 per bank, means the gesture is symbolic rather than material.

Despite that seemingly small figure, especially in major election cycles which now cost $1 billion or more, the political implications of the banks actively eschewing the Democrats because Warren or Brown’s outspoken criticism cannot be dismissed now that money has become the dominant feature of American democracy.

As recently as Thursday—as the Republicans moved to pass its new budget—Warren could be seen using social media to trumpet warnings about the ways in which Wall Street and the financial industry would benefit by the GOP proposals being put forth. On Twitter, she announced:

Americans want tougher rules & more accountability on Wall Street – not the GOP’s #bailoutbudget. pic.twitter.com/tWmKjQEp7F

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 26, 2015

The GOP budgets weaken the rules on Wall St. We know what they’re up to, & we’re watching: https://t.co/S76uXIzuNB #bailoutbudget

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 26, 2015

Meanwhile, Sen. Sherrod Brown has been Warren’s close ally in the Senate on such matters. Along with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Brown has been among the most outspoken proponents of breaking up the nation’s largest bank and re-instating the rules of the now defunct Glass-Steagall Act which—before it was repealed in the late 1990s under the Clinton administration—forced large financial insitutions to keep their investment arms and commercial banking divisions separate. Many critics blame the repeal of Glass Steagallas one of the key policy decisions that led to the 2008 financial disaster.

Though popular among progressives, the stances of Warren, Brown, and Sanders (who is an Independent but caucuses with the Democrats) have clearly ired Wall Street’s power brokers.

And, of course, the larger focus may ultimately fall on the presumed frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination for 2016: Hillary Clinton. Though many on the left have urged Warren to throw her hat in the ring to challenge for the nomination, Warren has repeatedly said she has no intention of entering the race.

Even though Clinton is well known as having a very comfortable relationship with Wall Street and the corporate world, Reuters reports that “political strategists say Clinton could struggle to raise money among Wall Street financiers who worry that Democrats are becoming less business friendly” because of the populist rhetoric of Warren.

According to the reporting:

Citi spokeswoman Molly Meiners declined to comment specifically on the Warren issue, saying the bank’s fund-raising political action committee (PAC) “contributes to candidates and parties across the political spectrum that share our desire for pro-business policies that promote economic growth.”

JPMorgan representatives have met Democratic Party officials to emphasize the connection between its annual contribution and the need for a friendlier attitude toward the banks, a source familiar with JPMorgan’s donations said. In past years, the bank has given its donation in one lump sum but this year has so far donated only a third of the amount, the source said.

Goldman, which already made its $15,000 donation for the year, took part in the Washington meeting between the four banks to talk about anti-big bank rhetoric of some Democratic lawmakers like Warren but has not had any discussions about withholding money, a source close to the bank said.

Beyond dirty politics: Harperism threatens democracy itself

BY RALPH SURETTE

It’s getting worse.

Stephen Harper is now serving notice that he’s willing to tear the social fabric of the country apart if that’s what it takes to get his party re-elected. That is, if torquing democratic process, the rule of law, election rules, the tax system etc., etc., to make them conform to Harperism isn’t enough, he’ll throw stink bombs in the public place in the expectation that, amid the chaos, he’ll be seen as the strong hand who can straighten things out.

There were several of these this past week. Speaking to the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, Harper let fall that rural people should be armed if they’re “a ways away from immediate police assistance.” He was accused of promoting vigilantism by, among others, the national assembly of Quebec, which passed a unanimous resolution denouncing him.

He dismissed the accusation as ridiculous, insisting that his was a “moderate” position. This is the Harper technique. Stake out an extreme position, then dress it up in moderation and wait for it to be accepted as such, by the Harperist “base” first, and then beyond.

Cruising for views on this in the Harper heartland, I found an editorial in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix (granted, a potted one from the Postmedia chain) that, surprisingly nevertheless, accused Harper of importing American culture wars. The gun debate in Canada has been about “balancing public safety and the rights of gun owners without undue expense and red tape,” not about whether the citizen should be armed (or about whether the society is at war with itself and we should fear that our neighbour is a criminal or a terrorist).

Besides, the editorial affirmed, citing American studies, it is “utterly false” that gun ownership increases security.

There were a couple more episodes. One Tory MP mused about “brownies” taking jobs away from “whities” and another invited niqab-wearers to go back where they came from. Both are experienced political operators. Both apologized with a wink to the base, but the substance stayed. Message sent. This has the mark of well-calibrated Harperism.

In response to my last column on the Harper record, I’ve had a number of correspondences, mostly in the snotty tone of neo-con etiquette, telling me to get my lily-livered head examined: dirty politics, big deal — Harper is just doing what they’ve all done. “Have you never heard of Jean Chrétien and the sponsorship scandal?” one asked.

Here’s the picture. No prime minister before — not Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Trudeau, Lester Pearson, John Diefenbaker and beyond — have ever assaulted the very principle of Parliament itself, ever attacked the chief justice of the Supreme Court, ever muzzled the scientists, neutered the parliamentary committee system, and so on. Dirty politics, corruption — yes indeed. But Harperism is worse than all that. It is an ideological assault on the elements of the constitutional order. It hangs pictures of the Queen all over, but owes its loyalties to the same dark, anti-democratic, corporate and imperialist forces that drive the American right wing.

And talking of parliamentary committees, the hearings on the secret police bill — Bill C-51– are on. Legal experts, civil libertarians and others have been, almost as one, trooping to Ottawa with carefully crafted arguments warning about the dangers of a bill that conflates peaceful protest with terrorism and works mostly outside the law.

They’re being met with Tory members on the committee not only imperiously uninterested in their arguments, but insinuating that if they’re against the bill, they must be in favour of terrorism — a class of people that would include four former prime ministers, five former Supreme Court judges, Amnesty International and essentially anyone who knows anything.

In the spirit of Harperist manipulation, the hearings are short and potentially embarrassing witnesses have been carefully excluded — the federal Privacy Commissioner, for example — as the government has no intention of changing anything, and as Canada’s international reputation for human rights and democracy goes down the drain.

Since Parliament is unfortunately no longer responsive, we can expect opposition to become extra-parliamentary. And, sure enough, there were demonstrations against the bill in 70 communities across Canada last weekend. These things don’t sprout up for nothing. Harper has triggered a politics of defiance, on the streets. Expect more of that, much more.

Meanwhile, Harper will be emboldened by the victory of his fellow traveller, Benjamin Netanyahu, who played the fear and race card at the last minute and won. Who knows what a desperate Harper might do?

All this, and the election campaign isn’t even on yet. Nor have we talked about the wobbling economy, Harper’s besmirched environmental record, or the Mike Duffy trial. Or will talking about those, too, be signs of sympathies for terrorism? We’re in deep waters. Keep your eyes peeled for just about anything.

Ralph Surette is a freelance journalist in Yarmouth County. This column was first published in the Chronicle Herald.

Photo: pmwebphotos/flickr

Taliban Leaders Are Living in Luxury in Qatar

BY SAMI YOUSAFZAI / MARCH 24, 2015 6:47 AM EDT

The Taliban office in Doha is pictured before its official opening in Doha, Qatar on June 18, 2013. OSAMA FAISAL/AP

Even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, the Taliban official remembered me when I called. I’d heard he was living in the Gulf emirate of Qatar, and I was planning to travel there soon. Good, he said, let’s meet for lunch or dinner. As I flew to Doha recently, the monarchy’s capital, I looked forward to seeing him. But by the time I landed in this futuristic city beside the sea, he wasn’t so welcoming. He arrived at my hotel room looking tense and uncomfortable. “Don’t use my name,” he said immediately. “Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me. No photos. No camera. No nothing.”

Several days later, I set out to see the exclusive neighborhood in suburban Doha where some of the Taliban live. But as I tried to turn onto a palm-shaded street, a guard in uniform stopped me and demanded to see my ID and a residency permit. I turned back.

In all my years of reporting on the Taliban, I’ve never been as stonewalled as I was by the officials who staff the Afghan insurgency’s “political office” in Qatar. They make no effort to disguise themselves or their identities. Even on the streets of Doha, a city filled with throngs of expats from all over the world, the Taliban’s long beards, turbans and traditional Afghan clothing stand out. Just don’t expect to get answers from these guys. They don’t like nosy strangers.

‘Like a Five-Star Hotel’

As one of the world’s wealthiest countries per capita, Qatar has always attracted ambitious Afghan men looking for jobs as truckers, builders and heavy-equipment operators. But the Taliban have their own reason to be there. In 2013 their leaders assigned them to open an office in Doha and begin exploratory peace talks with the U.S. government. Even though the meetings soon broke off, the Taliban negotiators and their families stayed on as honored guests of the emir and his people. “We have good lives here,” my old acquaintance says. “We thank the state of Qatar for that.”

Yet this arrangement doesn’t sit well with other Afghans in Qatar. Some have long memories of beatings or imprisonments they endured when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Others resent the envoys’ privileges. “They ride around in big fancy cars, wearing spotless white clothes and expensive sunglasses,” says an Afghan businessman who has spent most of the past 30 years in Qatar. “They don’t have to sweat for a living like the rest of us.”

With a water tower that says “Welcome to Doha” in the background, greeters wait for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to de-plane on arrival in Doha, Qatar, on June 22, 2013. JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP

Far from it. The oil-rich state provides its Taliban guests and their families with every comfort: luxury SUVs, free medical care and air-conditioned homes the size of small castles. “Their bathrooms are bigger than our living rooms,” says an Afghan who has done plumbing jobs for Taliban households in Doha. “The service they get is like a five-star hotel,” says a Kabul-based Afghan intelligence officer who specializes in tracking Taliban activities in Doha. He, like almost everyone else I spoke to, asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. According to an Afghan diplomat in Qatar, the Taliban there practically have room service: “Every morning a delivery van drives right up to each one’s residence to fill orders for fresh meat, vegetables, fruit and whatever else they might need.”

The Guantanamo Five Are Homesick

These emissaries haven’t done much to earn their special treatment. A mutually acceptable peace plan is still no more than a distant fantasy. Although Taliban insiders and senior Afghan officials say the two sides are getting close to beginning formal talks, no date has been set. So far, the Qatar contingent can point to only one achievement of consequence: the swap that freed five senior Guantanamo prisoners last May in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, a captured American soldier. Bergdahl remains on active duty while the Army decides whether to court-martial him on charges of desertion. Meanwhile, the Guantanamo Five are in Qatar, at Washington’s behest. Under the terms of their release, they’re barred from leaving the country until a year has passed. Not that they have anyplace else to go; neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan wants them, fearing they will return to the battlefield.

The emir has every reason to keep them as comfortable as possible. By accepting custody of the former Guantanamo inmates, he solved a sticky problem for the Americans and earned valuable diplomatic points in Washington. At the same time, he wants Islamists in Qatar and the rest of the Arab world to see him as sympathetic to the Taliban. Accordingly, the Guantanamo Five are also getting the royal treatment. In fact, to help them feel less homesick, each one has been allowed to bring in five other Taliban families for assistance and companionship. As of a few weeks ago, there were said to be 35 Taliban households linked to the former prisoners in and around Doha, with more expected to arrive soon.

Despite such enviable accommodations, not all of the former Guantanamo inmates seem happy. Reports are circulating among senior Taliban commanders that at least two of them are eager to leave Qatar and return to the war zone. The reunion could get ugly. One of the reputed malcontents, Mullah Fazl Akhund, was head of the Taliban regime’s army until his capture during the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Senior Taliban members say he’s convinced he should lead the insurgency. He regards Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, the current chief of the group’s ruling council, as a usurper. One senior commander says members of Mansour’s circle, trying to head off a power struggle, have warned Western intelligence that Fazl is likely to join ISIS if he’s allowed to leave Qatar.

In the Pakistani borderlands, the group’s followers have more pressing worries. They say they’re sick of waiting for the supposed peacemakers in Qatar to deliver a deal. Not long ago I ran into a former Taliban intelligence officer who now peddles fruits and vegetables on a roadside in Peshawar. “Last night was rainy,” he said. “My house has only a mud roof. I didn’t know how else to keep it from collapsing, so I spent the night reciting verses from the Koran. Those guys in Qatar don’t know what it’s like to be cold and wet.”

Mullah Abdul, a 30-year-old fighter from Kunduz province, is similarly disgusted. “If they can’t get anything done at that office in Qatar, they should come back and live here like the rest of us,” he says.

Even in the desert heat of Doha, the Taliban’s would-be peacemakers must surely find that prospect chilling.

— With Sam Seibert in New York

Modern American Apartheid, Insidious and Undeclared

The infamous era of apartheid in South Africa shares a strikingly parallel path with racial apartheid in present day America. One is globally notorious, the other sophisticated and subtle. 

Economic historians increasingly agree that racial economic inequality in America is worse than it was at any period in ancient Rome, or in slaveholding, colonial America during the late 18th century, or at the height of apartheid in South Africa.

South Africa’s apartheid regime is remembered as one of the worst crimes against humanity of the 20th century.

Today, America is exhibiting many of the racial excesses of apartheid South Africa: extreme racial income inequality, apartheid schools, a racialised for-profit prison system, institutionally racist police practices, and residential re-segregation.

Residential apartheid is, without question, at the heart of the U.S. system of racial oppression. For almost a century, America has been racially divided into two societies: one, predominantly black and poor, located in the inner cities; the other, largely white and affluent, located in the suburbs. White Americans have kept their residential neighborhoods white since roughly 1920. Initially, by simply murdering African-Americans trying to move in.

Then, the black ghetto was created by whites during the first half of the twentieth century in order to isolate growing urban black populations. Historian Kenneth B. Clark explains how:

“the dark ghetto’s invisible walls have been erected by the white society, by those who have power, both to confine those who have no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. They are social, political, educational, and above all-economic colonies.”

American residential apartheid operated through a sophisticated patchwork system of racial non-laws and non-racial laws. Whites looking to keep their neighborhoods white knew that they could not rely on overt racial laws, so they relied on racial non-laws, such as restrictive covenants which restrict people of a certain race from moving into a given neighborhood. Then, you have the non-racial laws, such as zoning and mortgage supports. These laws are technically non-racial in the books, but have often been implemented in racial ways. Martin Luther King Jr. described these laws as camouflaged segregation that form a “system of internal colonialism.”

Despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies. A Harvard University report on intergenerational mobility in the United States illustrates how one’s Zip Code trumps talent when determining a child’s future prospects. Despite social mobility and the American dream being nationwide ideals, ultimately, in apartheid America, the geographical and racial happenstance of one’s birth is the key determinant of a child’s future success.
The residential apartheid system used in South Africa was based on the native reservation system, first used by the American government. At a stroke, the passing of the Natives Land Act on 19 June 1913 saw the majority of South African land reserved for whites, or Europeans. Just 7 percent of agricultural land was set aside on reserves for blacks, despite Africans being 70 percent of the population.

Much like residential apartheid in America today, this Act created a self-fulfilling, downward spiral of poverty and degradation, which white segments of society point at in order to justify ongoing residential re-segregation.

Residential segregation inevitably creates apartheid schools. Six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court determined that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional in the landmark ruling Brown vs. Board of Education, we are witnessing the precipitous re-segregation of America’s schools.

Black students are the most likely racial group to attend what researchers call “apartheid schools”, which Harvard’s Civil Rights Project describes as “virtually all non-white, with higher concentrations of poverty, much lower test scores, less-experienced teachers, and limited resources.”

South African anti-apartheid hero Steve Biko once remarked that “the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Apartheid in South Africa sought to create apartheid schools and utilize the education system as means of racial control and demobilization by establishing the Bantu Education Act. The Act ensured that black South Africans could not aspire to greatness, and they could be nothing more than cheap fuel for the highly profitable machine of Apartheid.

Impunity for white policemen and vigilantes who kill Blacks is yet another commonality between apartheid South Africa and modern American apartheid. Today, in the free and democratic United States, a black man will be killed every 28 hours by police, security guards or self-appointed vigilantes.

Black South Africans were only viewed as useful by the apartheid regime to the extent that they could provide cheap labour. The regime even enacted “pass laws” which required blacks to produce employment documents for any white person, police officer and 10-year-old white children alike.

One can clearly see parallels between the draconian “pass law” measure and the “stop-and-frisk” policies employed by the New York City Police Department. Latinos and Blacks make up 84 percent of all those stopped, although they make up respectively 29 and 23 percent of New York City’s population. Furthermore, statistics show that NYPD officers are far more likely to use physical force against Blacks and Latinos during stops.

The “stop-and-frisk” policy is an excellent example of an ineffective policy that, under the guise of upholding public safety, actively violates the rights of already disempowered communities of color.

The United States right now incarcerates more African-Americans as a percentage than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.
A Senate hearing on the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that the American prison population hovered around 25,000 throughout the 1900s, until the 1980′s when America suddenly experienced a massive increase in the inmate population to over a quarter million. The cause was Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs which intentionally, and disproportionately targeted blacks.

Historian Michelle Alexander illustrates how the drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working-class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation and affirmative action.

Today, statistics show that white youth are more likely to use illegal drugs than black youth. Yet in some states, African Americans comprise eighty to ninety percent of all imprisoned drug offenders. Blacks are arrested for minor drug offenses because it is big business: there is the drug testing industry, prosecutors, police, lawyers, rehabilitation therapists, psychologists, parole officers, etc.

For decades, the African-American crime rate has been falling but black imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Aside from the War on Drugs, the rise in prison population may have another less publicized cause: gradual privatization of the prison industry, with its profits-over-justice motives. If the beds aren’t filled, states are required to pay the prison companies for the empty space, which means taxpayers are largely left to deal with the bill that might come from lower crime and imprisonment rates.

The private prison system was designed by the rich and for the rich. The for-profit prison system depends on imprisoning blacks for its survival. Much in the same way the United States was designed.

Some argue that an African American rising to the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery is evidence that American apartheid does not exist. In fact, Mr. Obama is the poster-child of post-racialism: the idea that America is now devoid of racial preference, discrimination, and prejudice. On the contrary, post-racialism is in fact the new racism and a key aspect of American apartheid. Post-racialism pretends that there is equal opportunity while ignoring the institutional and economic racism that infects inner cities and fills prisons. Racial apartheid is stronger now because it operates under the guise that it doesn’t exist and that race is no longer an issue in America.

Politically, morally, economically and philosophically, apartheid in America bares a striking resemblance to apartheid in South Africa. However, modern American apartheid is perhaps all the more abhorrent for being insidious and undeclared.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him at garikai.chengu@gmail.com

Why The Western Alliance Is Ending

By Eric Zuesse

World leaders — heads of state especially — tend to be tactful people, whatever else might be said about them. When they discover that one of their number happens to be incredibly arrogant and psychopathic (and some leading psychopaths are skilled charmers; they’re not necessarily blatant about their aggressive intents like Hitler was), they don’t generally publicize the discovery of this unpleasant fact, because doing so would be worse than tactless: it would be downright stupid — it would jeopardize lots of the interdependencies that nations have with one-another. It would be counterproductive.

A good example of how they receive such negative information about one-another was provided by a telephone conversation on 26 February 2014 that was between Catherine Ashton, the EU’s Foreign Affairs chief, and her investigator, Urmas Paet, Estonia’s Foreign Minister, whom she had sent to Kiev when Ukraine’s democratically elected (though corrupt, as were all of his predecessors) President, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown in a very bloody sequence of events during January and February of 2014, and the question she needed an answer to now was whether this had been a revolution (authentically resulting from the Ukrainian public), or instead a coup (organized top-down, by “someone from the new coalition,” meaning a person who was on the side of the coalition against Yanukovych, the coalition that now controlled the Government). In other words: As the EU’s Foreign Affairs chief, Ashton needed to know whether the pro-EU coalition in Ukraine, who now were in control there, were in power because the Ukrainian public wanted them to be, or instead because they had seized power through those violent and, as yet, hard-to-understand, clashes, which might possibly have been orchestrated by “someone from the new coalition.”

That “coalition” were the leaders who had hoped that Yanukovych would seek to bring Ukraine into the EU. Just a few months earlier, Yanukovych had decided not to do that, but instead to continue Ukraine’s 1,200-year relationship with Russia. (Kiev was known as “the cradle of Russian civilization,” and the origin of the Rus people — those were the relocated Norsemen who had moved east and settled there (which is why so many Slavs are blond and why Hitler was an incredible bigot for worshipping the Norsemen while he despised the Slavs). It was a choice between Europe to the west, or Russia to the east; and Yanukovych had chosen to retain Ukraine’s ties to Russia. Ukraine is the main transit-route for Russian gas going into Europe, and received fees from Russia for that; Yanukovych chose to continue this; and he received, from Russia’s Gazprom company, steep discounts on Ukraine’s own gas-needs, as a further inducement for continuing that relationship. Polls of Ukrainians showed Ukrainians to be sharply divided about the issue, with western Ukraine strongly favoring to join the EU, and eastern Ukraine equally strongly favoring to stay with Russia. (For example, see this poll.)

Here is that phone-conversation, between Ashton and Paet, annotated by me to explain what they were referring to, and accompanied with a link to the phone-conversation itself, so that you can hear it if you wish.

As you can see (and hear) from that, Ashton was shocked to learn that it had been a coup that brought down Yanukovych, but she continued right on with the conversation, to other business, as if to indicate, “Well, let’s take care of less-disturbing matters, now.” It was clear from the conversation, up to that point, that Paet regretted needing to inform Ashton that the pro-EU side was actually controlled by some scoundrel (as yet unknown), and it’s clear that Ashton was shocked to hear this; but, as Ashton made evident from her response, she didn’t want to discuss this matter any further. These were two seasoned diplomats, and they both understood that there was nothing they could do about water already “under the bridge,” and on its way. But both of them realized, now, that its way was anything but democratic. This was useful information for Ashton to have, in her professional capacity for the EU.

She probably entertained a strong suspicion, even then, however, as to who was actually behind this coup (as she had only now learned it to have been). A few weeks before that phone-conversation, this youtube recording of yet another phone-conversation, in which Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, blurted to the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, her infamous “F—k the EU” statement (which, of course, was also an insult to Ashton personally), included also Nuland’s instruction to Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in Kiev, to get Arseniy Yatsenyuk appointed to run the post-coup Ukrainian Government (1:10 on the video): “I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience; he’s the guy, you know, who, what he needs is Klitch and Tyahnybok on the outside, he needs to be talking to them four times a week.” To which, Pyatt promptly said “Yeah, I think that’s right. Okay.” He had his assignment.

This assignment ended up being fulfilled on 26 February 2014, just four days after the February 22nd coup.

Coincidentally, on the very same day when Ashton heard Paet tell her that it had been a coup, “Yats” publicly received the appointment to run Ukraine’s Government, but not as Ukraine’s President (since the previous one had just been overthrown and such an immediate and non-democratic replacement of him would have been too obviously a coup), but instead as Ukraine’s other top post: Prime Minister. Obama wanted Yats’s sponsor, Yulia Tymoshenko, to win the election to replace Yanukovych as President, when that post was put up for a vote in only the northeastern half of Ukraine, the half that favored the EU and the U.S. over Russia. (It’s one of the reasons he had insisted she be released from prison from her corruption-conviction, immediately at the coup.) But she turned out to be too extreme in her Russia-hatred to be able to win even in just the northeast (the anti-Russian part of Ukraine); and, so, Obama had to settle for the slightly less racist-fascist anti-Russian, Petro Poroshenko, when he won on May 25th, and the Presidency was now downgraded to little more than a figurehead status.

Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, knew everything that was going on: for examples, both of those phone-conversations had been posted to youtube after having been recorded by Russian intelligence. So: he took the action that he needed to take in order to enable the residents of Crimea, where Russia had had its main naval base since 1783, to vote on whether to rejoin Russia, of which they had been a part until the Soviet dictator Khrushchev donated Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 — a move that was extremely unpopoular in Crimea. Putin enabled them to hold a plebiscite in Crimea on 16 March 2014, which was declared by international observers to be free and fair; and the result was 96% to rejoin Russia — virtually the same percentage that was shown in opinion-polls of Crimeans.

U.S. President Obama wanted to punish Putin for taking this defensive measure against U.S. aggression — against the anti-Russian coup in Ukraine. At first, the EU went along with the weakest sanctions that Obama pushed for against Russia, and they held out for as long as they could to delay the serious ones, until 17 July 2014, when the Obama regime in Ukraine sent up at least one fighter-jet and downed the MH17 Malaysian airliner over Ukraine’s conflict-zone and blamed it on pro-Russian separatists who had been bombed for months by the Ukrainian regime — the legend was that they had fired a “Buk” missile-launcher at the MH17 mistaking it for being one of Ukraine’s bombers. Not knowing that this had been yet another set-up job by the Obama-team, the EU now consented to join really stiff sanctions against Russia — on the theory that the downing wouldn’t have happened if Russia had not helped the separatists to do it.

But, then, EU leaders came to know that Obama had been behind this atrocity too.

What had started with Nuland’s “F—k the EU” was now the EU’s complicity with the racist-fascist, or ideologically nazi, anti-Russian coup-imposed Government that she and her boss Obama had placed into power in Ukraine. A lot of influential people in Europe aren’t as accepting of nazism as Obama quite evidently is.

When it became clear — after two successive invasions of the resisting Ukrainian region, Donbass, both of which invasions failed to do anything other than to destroy the region that Ukraine claimed to be protecting against ‘Terrorists’ via Ukraine’s ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ or ‘ATO’ for short — that assisting any further with America’s take-over of Ukraine would be not only war-criminal, but likely to lose, they started falling away from the entire effort.

Critically important in this regard was a 21 November 2014 vote in the U.N. on whether to condemn racist fascism, and especially to condemn Nazi Germany’s World War II Holocaust against mainly Jews. Far-right racist nationalism has been booming recently; and, so, when the United States was one of only three countries — the U.S., Ukraine, and Canada — to vote against this resolution, almost the entire world was shocked.

Clearly, now, President Obama, despite his liberal rhetoric, is far to the right of the vast majority of world-leaders, and is an insult to the memory of the U.S. troops who died fighting Hitler in World War II.

Among the first to abandon Obama on this, right on Christmas Eve, was Viktor Orban, Hungary’s leader, who was outraged at Obama’s treatment of Hungary as if it were a vassal-state of the U.S. Empire.

Then, on 3 January 2015, Milos Zeman, the Czech head-of-state, joined with Orban in that.

Those countries had experienced Hitler’s horrors first-hand, and they don’t like nazis, not even ones (such as Obama) who speak liberal platitudes and have dark skins (and so arent’ a fit for the nazi stereotype — but only for the Big Lie extremity of nazism).

And, now, it seems to be the majority of the EU who are resisting Obama’s contemptuous treatment of every other nation than his or her own.

Then, on March 12th, Iceland terminated its candidacy for joining the EU. The EU’s rightward bend toward the U.S. seems to have been a big turn-off to Icelanders — they won’t touch even the EU.

On March 13th, Ukraine’s figurehead President announced that he had reached agreement with “a series of the EU countries on the supply of armament”; and, the next day, Russian Television reported that 11 of the 28 EU member-nations had agreed to supply Ukraine with weapons. 17 refused Ukraine’s request for arms. 

Then, on March 17th, washingtonsblog bannered, “Major American Allies Ignore U.S. Pleas and Join China’s Alternative Bank” and reported that UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, India, France, Germany, and Italy, had all agreed to join China’s newly-forming international-development bank competitor to Washington’s IMF and World Bank. China, ever since the U.S. had started its Ukrainian proxy-war against Russia, has sided with Russia, against that war; and what this international conflict is really about is the continuance of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve-currency: Russia, China, and the rest of the BRIC countries — the rising developing economies — are seeking to replace the dollar-monopoly.

The Obama Administration has been twisting arms all over the world to try to block nations from signing onto China’s new world bank; and Obama’s getting rebuffed by all these nations, many of which have been traditional U.S. allies, is a historic turn away from the American Empire that he is trying to ram down everyone’s throat.

And, on March 20th, zerohedge bannered, “US ‘Isolated’ As Key Ally Japan Considers Joining China-Led Bank.” If this happens, then the American Empire will be all but over.

When President Bill Clinton virtually spat upon Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s historical heritage by joining with the Republicans’ war against Russia and inviting as many former Soviet-bloc nations into the U.S.’s now anti-Russian (no longer anti-communist;communism was gone) military alliance, NATO, as possible, and he even terminated the FDR-era Glass-Steagall Act requirements that had blocked the big banks from gambling with taxpayers’ money and from their keeping only the winnings and transferring onto the Government the losses when their bets go bad, Clinton started what Obama is now trying to culminate; and, finally, at long last, the world-at-large is clearly telling this anti-FDR, aggressively imperialist, U.S.A., to just shove its fascism down its toilet. More and more nations are saying, in effect: Good-bye, Uncle Sam; you’re not the nation you were during World War Two; you’ve instead become the global enemy; you’ve turned and become fascist yourself.

Among the few parts of Obama’s international rhetoric that are not fake, and that (because they are part of his anti-Russian propaganda campaign) express his actual fascist imperialist views — and which are increasingly being rejected — are these:

Bragging about his foreign policy, including his killing the Russia-friendly Muammar Gaddafi: “Wherever we have been involved over the last several years, I think the outcome has been better because of American leadership. … We are hugely influential; we’re the one indispensable nation. But when it comes to nation-building, when it comes to what is going to be a generational project in a place like Libya or a place like Syria or a place like Iraq, we can help, but we can’t do it for them.” [He pretends the U.S. is a big international charity.]

Telling West Point cadets that Russia and the other BRICs are enemies: “When a typhoon hits the Philippines, or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men [that’s actually his own regime’s thugs] occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help. (Applause.)  So the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed [he misspelled ‘past’] and it will be true for the century to come. … Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China’s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums. … America’s willingness to apply force around the world is the ultimate safeguard against chaos.” [Development of underdeveloped countries is ‘chaos,’ to him. Wow!]

To Wall Street’s CEOs, gathered in the White House: “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks. [The public are here analogized to the KKK; and the banksters are instead being portrayed as the Blacks whom the KKK are trying to lynch] … I want to help. … I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you [against the ‘pitchforks’].”

Lies denigrating Russia and Putin: “Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. … The life expectancy of theRussian male is around 60 years old. … The population is shrinking.”

His obsession to conquer Russia, as I reported it on 12 February 2015: “U.S. President Barack Obama’s just-issued National Security Strategy 2015 uses the term ‘aggression’ precisely 18 times, all but one of which are either explicitly, or else possibly, referring to Russia, as allegedly doing the alleged ‘aggression’ — never the U.S., and on only one occasion is he identifying North Korea with that term of opprobrium. Presumably, he thinks that Russia is by far the most ‘aggressive’ country.

After the bloody coup that replaced Ukraine’s democratically elected President by a nazi regime a year ago; and after that regime, serving Obama’s need for hiked EU sanctaions against Russia, shot down the MH17 Malaysian airliner on 17 July 2014 and slaughtered those 298 innocent people and blamed it all on Russian-supported separatists, all in order to further Obama’s bloody designs, he now has the gall to accuse Putin of “aggression” for defending the residents of Crimea from the nazi regime that Obama had installed. 

And there’s so much other icing on this bloody cake. For example, Russia’s Sputnik News headlined on March 20th, “South Stream: Life After Death?” and reported that the Obama regime was caught trying to instigate a coup to overthrow the current leader of Macedonia, who is balking against increasing sanctions on Russia, and who wants Macedonia to host a new pipeline for Russian gas into Europe.

And Sputnik News headlined the very next day, March 21st, “New OSCE Report on Ukraine Says Ukrainian Forces Obstruct Monitors’ Movement,” and reported that, “OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission said on Saturday it was denied access to an east Ukrainian territory controlled by Ukrainian armed forces.” Obama is re-arming his Ukrainian stooge-regime for yet a third attempt at exterminating the residents of the area of Ukraine that had voted 90% for the man he overthrew.

Obama and his stooges apparently think that they can get away with everything. And Republicans in the U.S. Congress complain not that he’s doing this, but instead that he’s not giving Ukraine enough weapons to do it.

And, all of this happened after Gallup international had polled 67,000 people in 65 countries in 2013 (and never again) on “Which country do you think is the greatest threat to peace in the world today?” and found that the U.S. crushed the ‘competition’ on that, with three times as many repondents identifying the U.S. as compared to the #2 nation, which was Pakistan. Russia wasn’t even listed in the news-reports (and the poll itself wasn’t made public), because the news-reports listed only the top six-mentioned nations, and Russia wasn’t among them. No doubt, this was one reason why Gallup yanked the question from their polling during 2014, especially after all of the international mayhem (including the coup in Ukraine) that the U.S. perpetrated last year.

So: EU leaders are finally getting the message — and even Japan and Australia are.

When George W. Bush put together a coalition of English-speaking countries to invade Iraq in 2003, nuclear weapons (other than the depleted uranium that we showered down upon Iraqis) weren’t an issue. Now, they definitely are. And, more and more, the world’s leaders are trying to dispense with “the one indispensable nation,” so that they (and everyone) won’t be dispensed with, themselves.

It’s well-known that only aristocrats profit from wars. And O’Bomba represents them just as much as his Republican ‘opposition’ do. But, now, even the aristocrats in other nations are increasingly abandoning him. All he evidently still has going for him is liberal and Democratic fools in the United States, who haven’t yet figured out that he’s a Manchurian candidate, Trojan horse, ‘Democrat,’ who (like the Clintons) would have FDR twisting in his grave if only he saw this. Fortunately, Roosevelt isn’t around to see it.

President O’Bomba might become even more isolated internationally than he is at home, where there are enough liberal fools to keep him barely aloft, and enough conservative fools to keep alive the myth that he’s a Marxist Muslim.

The U.S. has become a nut-hatchery, and the foreigners (especially the leaders in the ‘dispensable’ countries) are beginning to notice. Even America’s former friends are no longer amused.