WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
"Most Progressive Dem Platform in History" Disturbingly Hawkish
The Democratic Party platform may indeed be, as some have proclaimed, the “most progressive” in the history of the party—at least on various important domestic issues. But some of its foreign policy planks reflect a disturbingly hawkish worldview consistent with those of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Declaring that “we must defeat ISIS, al-Qaeda and their affiliates,” the platform calls for the United States and its allies to “destroy ISIS” strongholds in Iraq and Syria… Most disturbingly, while endorsing the United Nations-backed seven-party nuclear agreement, the platform claims that the party “will not hesitate to take military action if Iran violates the agreement.” Such a unilateral attack would constitute a direct violation of the U.N. Charter… Clinton and her representatives in the platform committee defeated a measure calling for an end of Israel’s occupation and illegal settlements. Indeed, the platform pegs challenges to the occupation and settlements by the United Nations and others as efforts to “delegitimize Israel.” This is particularly problematic language since, under Clinton’s leadership, the State Department formally listed efforts to “delegitimize” Israel as part of its definition of anti-Semitism. More
Hillary Clinton and Her Hawks
As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the Assad regime in Syria… Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of Defense, explicitly called for “limited military strikes” against the Assad regime. And earlier this month Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director, who has been advising candidate Clinton, declared in an interview that the next president would have to increase the number of Special Forces and carry out air strikes to help “moderate” groups against President Bashal al-Assad… It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for figures known to be close to a presidential candidate to make public recommendations for new and broader war abroad. The fact that such explicit plans for military strikes against the Assad regime were aired so openly soon after Clinton had clinched the Democratic nomination suggests that Clinton had encouraged Flournoy and Panetta to do so. The rationale for doing so is evidently not to strengthen her public support at home but to shape the policy decisions made by the Obama administration and the coalition of external supporters of the armed opposition to Assad. More
Ex-CIA Chief's Speech Disrupted by Chants of "No More War" at DNC
Former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta's speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Wednesday night was interrupted by chants of "No more war!" According to news reports, as Panetta dug into Hillary Clinton rival Donald Trump, delegates from Oregon, California, and Washington state broke into cries of "No more war!" and "Lies!" ABC News reported: "Other groups around the arena began chanting 'Hillary!' More chants of 'Love Not War!' and 'No More Drones!' broke out before being swallowed by 'USA!' from most of the arena." More
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The Hawks’ Election Strategy: Pushing a New Cold War
The past few weeks have cemented an extraordinary alliance to defeat Trump that joins two foreign-policy sects that were never entirely distinct: the neoconservatives who commandeered the Bush-Cheney foreign policy of 2001-2006, and liberal interventionists who supported the Iraq war, the Libya war, an expanded program of drone killings, and military intervention in Syria beyond what the Obama administration has allowed. With a spate of recent articles and op-eds, these people are preparing the ground for Hillary Clinton to assert that the Russian government is in league with the Trump campaign, and that Russia has intervened in the election by releasing hacked Democratic National Committee emails to embarrass Clinton… The truth is that the charge of fascism against Trump was a stopgap measure. Now it has been replaced by a charge that he is soft on the Communist menace, or the next worst thing—which they are betting the American mind will translate into the same thing—he is soft on the Russian menace. Fascism was never a ripe choice of terms. It gets hardly any play and commands little attention in America. For the neoconservatives, Red-baiting is a more familiar tactic and in the absence of a Red, a Russian will do. They have good reason to suppose that Hillary Clinton will take the hint and adopt the convenient amalgam in order to sow confusion. The Russian menace resembles the Communist menace in the same way that the word “Iran” resembles the word “Iraq.” More
DEMOCRATS IN PHILLY: Money corrupts politicians, Unless we’re the ones taking it
In 2012, President Barack Obama banned lobbyists from giving to DNC or paying for convention-related expenses. But this February, the DNC eliminated those rules — opening the floodgates for corporate cash to slosh through Philadelphia… Over three days of speaking with people at the DNC, I heard a lot of talk about how the Democratic leadership truly longs for freedom from their corporate donors and plans to overturn Citizens United at the first opportunity. If that’s true, they sure have a funny way of showing it… Corporate fingerprints are all over almost every event here, and yet the conventions are also supposed to be periods of peak loyalty — when party members, particularly those who support the presidential nominee, are unwilling to question it. More
Khizr Khan, Father of American Muslim Soldier Killed in Iraq, Shames Donald Trump
Given that Hillary Clinton’s Senate vote, on October 11, 2002, to authorize the invasion of Iraq might have been what cost her the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2008, it was remarkable that the most powerful speech on her behalf on Thursday night in Philadelphia came from the father of an American soldier who was killed in that war. However, the words of Khizr Khan — a Pakistani Muslim immigrant, whose son, Capt. Humayun S.M. Khan, was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for saving the lives of fellow soldiers in Baquba, Iraq in 2004 — were not about the wisdom or morality or politics of the war. They were about how his son’s love of country, and his family’s sacrifice, exposed the anti-Muslim bigotry behind Donald Trump’s plan to bar followers of that faith from becoming Americans. More
FULL VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ery-Zgo5ALs
LABOR SUPPORTS #BlacksLivesMatter;
CALL ON POLICE UNIONS FOR ACCOUNTABILITY
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released the following statement in reaction to the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile:
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, the two African-American men who were shot by police within 24 hours of each other. Racism plays an insidious role in the daily lives of all working people of color. This is a labor issue because it is a workplace issue; it is a community issue, and unions are the community. Philando Castile was a union member, and so his family is our family… Labor cannot and will not sit on the sidelines when it comes to racial justice. It is not enough to simply say, "Black Lives Matter." We must and will continue to fight for reforms in policing and to address issues of racial and economic inequality. More
Freddie Gray death: remaining charges dropped against police officers
Baltimore prosecutors have dropped all remaining charges against police officers in the death of Freddie Gray. The surprise announcement Wednesday comes after four trials that ended with no conviction, and means there will likely be no criminal accountability over Gray’s death. Gray, a 25-year-old African American man, sustained fatal injuries in the back of a police van in April 2015… After months of failure to secure a conviction, many activists had lost faith in [prosecutor Marilyn Mosby’s] strategy, culminating in Wednesday’s announcement to drop the charges. But in an emotional press conference Wednesday, Mosby pinned blame for the unsuccessful prosecution on “systemic and inherent problems” with the police investigation. “We do not believe Freddie Gray killed himself,” she declared. More
White people think racism is getting worse. Against white people.
Our recent research suggests yet another way black and white Americans see race differently: Whites now think bias against white people is more of a problem than bias against black people… When asked about the present-day United States, a striking difference emerged. Our average white respondent believed that at the time of our survey in 2011, anti-white bias was an even bigger problem than anti-black bias. This perception is fascinating, as it stands in stark contrast to data on almost any outcome that has been assessed. From life expectancy to school discipline to mortgage rejection to police use of force, outcomes for white Americans tend to be — in the aggregate — better than outcomes for black Americans, often substantially so… Our findings do not indicate a verifiable surge in anti-whiteness in recent years or identify a new victimization of white Americans. Rather, our research reveals a heightened perception among whites that they are increasingly the primary victims of bias in America — a perception that statistics say is wrong. More
US Media Find European Terror Deaths 19 Times More Interesting Than Mideast Terror Deaths
A survey conducted by FAIR of US media coverage of ISIS or ISIS-inspired attacks in Europe and the Middle East reveals a disparity of coverage, showing that European deaths are roughly 1,800 percent more newsworthy than deaths in the Middle East… Building on a survey of media mentions from March (AlterNet, 3/31/16) of mass attacks on civilians that are either connected to or perceived to be connected to ISIS (note: The Nice attack has yet to be confirmed as an ISIS-inspired attack), one finds that a death in Europe, broadly speaking, is seen as 19 times more newsworthy as one in the Middle East. Setting aside Baghdad, which one could categorize as a “war zone” (unlike Turkey or Lebanon), deaths in non-Western attacks are nine times less likely to garner news coverage. More
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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
SYRIA PROPAGANDA WAR: Chapter xxxx
The Syrian government announced yesterday that it would allow civilians and disarmed fighters to escape the fighting and leave the besieged opposition-held part of Aleppo. Mainstream media reports, relying on rebel sources, say that there are 250,000-300,000 civilians in Eastern Aleppo; other credible witnesses have estimated perhaps 30-40,000 civilians, mostly the families of rebel fighters (mainly the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front). In contrast, 1.5-2 million people live in the government-held part of Aleppo and are subject to random artillery and rocket fire from the rebels. Without a doubt, in this brutal civil war atrocities have been committed on both sides – though we typically hear only about those committed by the Syrian government. Now, the offer to allow civilians to escape the fighting is treated like some sinister ruse by US official spokespeople, their MSM stenographers and some “human rights” NGOs. Instead, they insist that relief supplies should be allowed into the rebel-held parts of the city so they can be available to both civilians and opposition fighters. When has that ever happened during a war? And in case you wonder why more civilians don’t flee, reports are that they are coerced by rebel fighters and fired upon if the try to leave. Under other circumstances, the same US establishment figures would be clucking about “human shields”. . .
Obama did too much in Syria, not too little
Conventional wisdom holds that if the United States had done more to affect the course of Syria's civil war, the Islamic State terrorist group might never have taken hold, Syrian President Bashar Assad might have been defeated, and the scale of the war might have been far smaller. According to this argument, the terrorist attacks that fill our headlines are the results of failed policy. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Providing lethal aid early would have made matters worse, accelerating the war rather than slowing it. What no one wants to see today, because so few saw it at the time, is that there was another policy that could have prevented the chaos now consuming the region… When President Obama called on Assad to step down in August of 2011, he invested the U.S. in the dictator’s defeat without changing policy on the ground to facilitate that outcome. The possibility of Assad winning the war outright was no longer on the table, and U.S. acquiescence to a political solution in which Assad remained became more difficult. More
REBRANDING AL-QAEDA:
The Nusra Front Is Dead and Stronger Than Ever Before
In severing its ties to al Qaeda, the organization is more clearly than ever demonstrating its long-game approach to Syria, in which it seeks to embed within revolutionary dynamics and encourage Islamist unity to outsmart its enemies, both near and far. In this sense, the Nusra Front (and now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) differ markedly from the Islamic State, which has consistently acted alone and in outright competition with other Islamist armed factions. Instead of unity, the Islamic State explicitly seeks division. Ultimately, while this may be a change in name and formal affiliation, Jolani’s group will remain largely the same. Therefore, this is by no means a loss to al Qaeda… Simply put, al Qaeda is coordinating its Syrian affiliate’s dissolution of ties to its own core leadership for the sake of preserving the long-term viability of the Nusra Front and its jihadi strategic objectives. The ideological ties between al Qaeda and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham remain strong… The Nusra Front’s goal is simple: It seeks to build an expanding blanket of legitimacy in Syria, which one day in the future will be of imperative importance in justifying the establishment of an Islamic emirate. More
ISRAEL SUPPORTING REBEL SAFE ZONE: Opens Border With Syria to “Humanitarian Aid”
“Israel finally agreed to allow in three types of aid: medical, educational and food,” said Moti Kahana, a businessman and founder of the NGO Amaliah, who sold his company in 2010 and since then has been using his own money to aid the Syrian rebels… The aid is being transferred into what Kahana calls a “safe zone” adjacent to the border and comprised of the town of Quneitra and its surrounding area… Asked how the aid is going to be transferred into Syria and whether the IDF is going to insure security for the delivery, Kahana responded, “the IDF knows who to trust.” More
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S VIETNAM
The U.S. war in Afghanistan will officially pass the 15-year mark in a few months. But like Vietnam, where the United States began aiding French colonial forces in the late 1940s, Afghanistan has been the target of Washington’s war-making for more than three-and-a-half decades… President Obama explicitly rejected any analogy to Vietnam in a speech nearly seven years ago. But like Vietnam, our ongoing conflict in Afghanistan has become a hopeless quagmire, marked by official lies, atrocities, pervasive corruption and poorly led government forces who survive in the field thanks mainly to U.S. bombing. Like Vietnam, Afghanistan represents a staggering waste of lives (more than 300,000 direct casualties through early 2015) and resources (more than two trillion dollars). Even more than Vietnam, it is a conflict for which no one in Washington bothers to offer any strategic rationale. The best that President Obama could come up with in his July 6 statement on Afghanistan, was “I strongly believe that it is in our national security interest — especially after all the blood and treasure we’ve invested in Afghanistan over the years — that we give our Afghan partners the very best opportunity to succeed.” More
THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE THE ARMS BUSINESS
When American firms dominate a global market worth more than $70 billion a year, you’d expect to hear about it. Not so with the global arms trade. It’s good for one or two stories a year in the mainstream media, usually when the annual statistics on the state of the business come out… To be completely accurate, there is one group of people who pay remarkably close attention to these trends -- executives of the defense contractors that are cashing in on this growth market. With the Pentagon and related agencies taking in “only” about $600 billion a year -- high by historical standards but tens of billions of dollars less than hoped for by the defense industry -- companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics have been looking to global markets as their major source of new revenue… One place where, with a helping hand from the Obama administration and the Pentagon, the arms industry has been doing a lot better of late is the Middle East. More
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