WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
THE GREAT DEMOCRATIC INVERSION
For decades, Democratic presidential candidates have been making steady gains among upper income whites and whites with college and postgraduate degrees. This year, however, is the first time in at least six decades that the Democratic nominee is positioned to win a majority of these upscale voters. According to the Oct. 20 Reuters-IPSOS tracking survey, Hillary Clinton now leads Donald Trump by 5.6 points among all whites earning $75,000 or more… According to an Oct. 23 ABC News poll, Clinton also leads among all white college graduates, 52-36. She has an unprecedented gender gap among these voters, leading 62-30 among college-educated white women and tying among college educated white men, 42-42. What these figures suggest is that the 2016 election will represent a complete inversion of the New Deal order among white voters. From the 1930s into the 1980s and early 1990s, majorities of downscale whites voted Democratic and upscale whites voted Republican. Now, looking at 
combined male and female vote totals, the opposite is true… Whites remain the majority in both political parties, 57 percent of Democratic voters and 86 percent of Republicans. White Democrats share a high level of optimism with the two largest Democratic minority constituencies, African-Americans and Hispanics. Working class African-Americans and Hispanics are, like their white counterparts without degrees, on the low end of the income distribution. When blacks and Hispanics compare their situations to those of their parents, they see their circumstances improving, in contrast to low income, non-college whites, who see a downward trajectory. More
combined male and female vote totals, the opposite is true… Whites remain the majority in both political parties, 57 percent of Democratic voters and 86 percent of Republicans. White Democrats share a high level of optimism with the two largest Democratic minority constituencies, African-Americans and Hispanics. Working class African-Americans and Hispanics are, like their white counterparts without degrees, on the low end of the income distribution. When blacks and Hispanics compare their situations to those of their parents, they see their circumstances improving, in contrast to low income, non-college whites, who see a downward trajectory. More
Voter Suppression is the Real Election Scandal
The integrity of this year’s election is under attack — but not in the way Donald Trump claims it is. Ahead of last week’s final debate, the Republican nominee called the election “rigged” dozens of times — in at least 20 tweets sent in the course of a single weekend as well as at rallies across the country in which he called on supporters to show up in “certain areas” and watch the polls… But the real problems with this year’s vote will be largely invisible on Election Day. Three years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a major section of the Voting Rights Act, opening the doors to new efforts to restrict voting. The impact of that decision will be felt at the polls for the first time this year. Measures passed in the aftermath of that decision — restrictive voter ID laws, new requirements for voter registration, cuts to early voting options and polling sites, and other schemes — are the real threat to the November 8 vote, civil rights advocates say. And these procedural obstacles to the polls pose more insidious, large-scale challenges to suffrage than the more egregious and illegal harassment of the sort Trump has repeatedly advocated. More
Billionaires’ Spending on 2016 Election Reaches $88 Million
Two dozen billionaires have spent $88 million on the 2016 presidential campaign, bankrolling an election in which both major-party nominees have railed against the influence of money in politics. Democrat Hillary Clinton has been the largest beneficiary of billionaires’ cash, with 19 of them donating a total of $70 million to her top allied super PAC, Priorities USA Action, according to the latest Federal Election Commission disclosure. Four billionaires have given $18 million to the set of super PACs backing Republican Donald Trump. More
The ‘P’ in PBS Should Stand for ‘Plutocratic’ or ‘Pentagon’
Because the United States fails to provide anything like adequate funding for public broadcasting, both PBS and National Public Radio (a regular vehicle for neoliberal business ideology) depend upon foundations, corporations and wealthy individuals to pay for much of their programming. Beneath their standard claims to have no interest in shaping public media content, these private funders have bottom-line agendas, meaning that their contributions come with strings attached—strings that undermine the integrity of the “independent” journalism they bankroll… What might seem more surprising, perhaps, is the remarkable extent to which the “P” in PBS often seems to stand for “Pentagon,” or perhaps “Presidential,” when it comes to foreign policy content. Whatever the global issue of the day or week, “NewsHour” anchors and their invited “experts” can be counted on to report and reflect in accord with the doctrinal assumption that Washington always operates with the best of intentions. They almost uniformly treat the U.S. as a great, benevolent and indispensable force for freedom, democracy, security, peace and order in a dangerous world full of evil and deadly actors. More
The verdict for those armed militants who took over a federal building is white privilege in action
It is impossible to ignore race here. These were a group of armed white people, mostly men, taking over a facility. Just imagine: What would happen if a group of armed black men, protesting police brutality, tried to take over a police facility and hold it hostage for more than a month? Would they even come out alive and get to trial? Would a jury find them and their cause relatable, making it easier to send them back home with no prison time? One doesn’t have to do much imagining here, either. The social science is pretty clear: People are much more likely to look at black people and see criminals and wrongdoers. They don’t get the privilege of innocence in the same way white people — including these militants in Oregon — do. More
Islamophobia in the Age of Trump
The frequency of anti-Muslim behavior in the United States is increasing at an alarming rate. A study released earlier this year by California State University-San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism found that incidents of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab violence in the United States increased drastically from 2014 to 2015, by 78.2% and 219% respectively, reaching levels that haven’t been seen since the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Council on Arab-Islamic Relations (CAIR) found that 2015 saw the highest number of attacks directed against mosques in any year since it began tracking such incidents in 2009. So far in 2016, the Huffington Post’s “Islamophobia tracker” has catalogued 289 anti-Muslim acts, which includes both violent and non-violent incidents. More
Police from 5 States Escalate Violence, Shoot Horses to Clear 1851 Treaty Camp
Over 300 police officers in riot gear, 8 ATVs, 5 armored vehicles, 2 helicopters, and numerous military-grade humvees showed up north of the newly formed frontline camp just east of Highway 1806. The 1851 Treaty Camp was set up this past Sunday directly in the path of the pipeline, on land recently purchased by DAPL. Today this camp, a reclamation of unceded Dakota territory affirmed as part of the Standing Rock Reservation in the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1851, was violently cleared. Both blockades established this past weekend to enable that occupation were also cleared. In addition to pepper spray and percussion grenades, shotguns were fired into 
the crowd with less lethal ammunition and a sound cannon was used (see images below). At least one person was tased and the barbed hook lodged in his face, just outside his eye. Another was hit in the face by a rubber bullet. More
the crowd with less lethal ammunition and a sound cannon was used (see images below). At least one person was tased and the barbed hook lodged in his face, just outside his eye. Another was hit in the face by a rubber bullet. More
TAKE AWAY MILITARY WEAPONS FROM POLICE!
Throughout the Black Lives Matter movement, nonviolent protesters have been bombarded with armed tanks, rubber bullets, and grenade launchers containing toxic tear gas. As we witnessed in Ferguson, Baltimore, Charlotte and elsewhere, peaceful demonstrations for racial justice and police accountability have been routinely met with large trucks of law enforcement officers dressed and armed for war-like combat. Police do not typically address white protesters in the same manner. The utilization of military equipment and tactics in local police departments fuels the widespread mentality that law enforcement officers, meant to protect and serve, are mere combatants in black and brown communities.
* * * *
BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID. . .
Clinton advisor Michael Morell put this sentiment in terms both more concise and grandiose:
“We’re back and we’re going to lead again.” (source)
HILLARY CLINTON: A Hawk in the Wings
Meanwhile, the candidate that challenged Obama as too naïve and peace-loving back in 2008 is poised to succeed him as president. Once again, she has staked out a more hawkish position. And this time she has a large chunk of the foreign policy elite behind her. As Greg Jaffe wrote last week in The Washington Post: “In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the White House — and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief.
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy, via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.” More
Neocon endorses Clinton,
Calling her “2016’s real conservative” and “the candidate of the status quo”
Wall Street has thrown its weight behind Hillary Clinton. Some of the biggest names in the U.S. right-wing establishment have also expressed support for her. Another neocon added his name to the pro-Clinton list on Thursday. James Kirchick penned an op-ed in The Daily Beast titled “Hillary Clinton Is 2016’s Real Conservative — Not Donald Trump.” “Clinton is the candidate of the status quo, something that conservatives, by definition, are supposed to uphold,” Kirchick writes. More
US voters wary of expanding military presence overseas
Only 25 per cent of Americans would like the next president to expand the role of the US military overseas, according to a poll that underlines the cautious mood of voters about foreign policy. In the poll, only 14 per cent of respondents said US foreign policy had made the country more secure since 9/11, when it launched the more than 15 years of military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere… The sceptical public mood could be a test for Hillary Clinton if she is to win the election, given her push for the US to be more involved in the Syrian civil war, not least the creation of safe zones for refugees. More
* * * *
NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Obama’s Foreign Policy:
A HOSTAGE TO BIPARTISAN CONSENSUS
As we approach the final months of the Obama presidency, it’s clear that the 
“change” in foreign
policy that candidate Obama promised voters has not materialized. His pledges to end the Iraq War, to pursue a nuclear-free world, to improve relations with Russia, to act as an honest broker between Israel and Palestine, and to improve relations with the Arab world have all been left unfulfilled. That his likely successor, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is to the right of the president on matters of national security is, in a way, an all-too-fitting monument to an era of dashed expectations… It was widely assumed that Obama would pick up the pieces of the Bush years and exorcise hegemonic fantasies from the body politic. Instead, over his two terms in office, the convergence of the neoconservative and Wilsonian interventionist creeds has solidified into orthodoxy. No better evidence of this exists than the fact that the neocons who served as the instigators and defenders of George W. Bush’s foreign policy have become devoted supporters of Hillary Clinton. More
“change” in foreign
policy that candidate Obama promised voters has not materialized. His pledges to end the Iraq War, to pursue a nuclear-free world, to improve relations with Russia, to act as an honest broker between Israel and Palestine, and to improve relations with the Arab world have all been left unfulfilled. That his likely successor, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is to the right of the president on matters of national security is, in a way, an all-too-fitting monument to an era of dashed expectations… It was widely assumed that Obama would pick up the pieces of the Bush years and exorcise hegemonic fantasies from the body politic. Instead, over his two terms in office, the convergence of the neoconservative and Wilsonian interventionist creeds has solidified into orthodoxy. No better evidence of this exists than the fact that the neocons who served as the instigators and defenders of George W. Bush’s foreign policy have become devoted supporters of Hillary Clinton. More
THE DOCTRINE OF ARMED EXCEPTIONALISM
Through good times and bad, regardless of what’s actually happening in the world, one thing is certain: in the long run, the Pentagon budget won’t go down. It’s not that that budget has never been reduced. At pivotal moments, like the end of World War II as well as war's end in Korea and Vietnam, there were indeed temporary downturns, as there was after the Cold War ended. More recently, the Budget Control Act of 2011 threw a monkey wrench into the Pentagon’s plans for funding that would go ever onward and upward by putting a cap on the money Congress could pony up for it. The remarkable thing, though, is not that such moments have occurred, but how modest and short-lived they’ve proved to be… The overwhelming consensus in favor of a “cover the globe” military strategy has been broken from time to time by popular resistance to the idea of using war as a central tool of foreign policy. In such periods, getting Americans behind a program of feeding the military machine massive sums of money has generally required a heavy dose of fear. More
DENNIS KUCINICH:
Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors.
I remember other hearings where the Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $1 trillion in accounts, lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq, and rigged a missile-defense test so that an interceptor could easily home in on a target. War is first and foremost a profitable racket. How else to explain that in the past 15 years this city’s so called bipartisan foreign policy elite has promoted wars in Iraq and Libya, and interventions in Syria and Yemen, which have opened Pandora’s Box to a trusting world, to the tune of trillions of dollars, a windfall for military contractors. DC’s think “tanks” should rightly be included in the taxonomy of armored war vehicles and not as gathering places for refugees from academia. According to the front page of this past Friday’s Washington Post, the bipartisan foreign-policy elite recommends the next president show less restraint than President Obama. Acting at the urging of “liberal” hawks brandishing humanitarian intervention, read war, the Obama administration attacked Libya along with allied powers working through NATO… The self-identified liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America’s current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on “mission accomplished.” CAP, according to a report in The Nation, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who make the bombers that CAP wants to rain hellfire on Syria. More
Media Roll Out Welcome Mat for 'Humanitarian' War in Syria
As she marches toward the US presidency, Hillary Clinton has stepped up her promotion of the idea that a no-fly zone in Syria could “save lives” and “hasten the end of the conflict” that has devastated that country since 2011… Beyond the opinion pages, media figures are pushing the “humanitarian” approach with varying degrees of subtlety. Meet the Press host Chuck Todd (10/16/16) recently pressed Vice President Joe Biden on the lack of a no-fly zone over Aleppo, suggesting that the Obama administration will “look back and wonder what if? What if? What if? What if?” …In Syria’s brutal war, meanwhile, humanitarian motives will presumably be utilized as a veneer for pursuing more fundamental goals, like neutralizing resistance to US/Israeli regional designs and promoting that profitable sort of chaos that produces massive arms sales. More
Pentagon Ignored Evidence of Civilian Casualties in ISIS Strikes
U.S. AUTHORITIES OVERSEEING the war against the Islamic State in Syria have failed to respond to evidence of hundreds of civilian casualties resulting from coalition airstrikes and potential violations of the laws of war, according to a startling new account from Amnesty International. In a press release issued Tuesday night, Amnesty said it has presented the Pentagon with evidence that 11 coalition airstrikes in Syria over the past two years appear to have led to the deaths of as many as 300 civilians — and that so far that evidence has been met with silence. More
COCKBURN: Aleppo vs. Mosul: Media Biases
But look at how differently the international media is treating a similar situation in Mosul, 300 miles east of Aleppo, where one million people and an estimated 5,000 Isis fighters are being encircled by the Iraqi army fighting alongside Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia and Sunni paramilitaries and with massive support from a US-led air campaign. In the case of Mosul, unlike Aleppo, the defenders are to blame for endangering civilians by using them as human shields and preventing them leaving. In East Aleppo, fortunately, there are no human shields – though the UN says that half the civilian population wants to depart – but simply innocent victims of Russian savagery. Destruction in Aleppo by Russian air strikes is compared to the destruction of Grozny in Chechnya sixteen years ago, but, curiously, no analogy is made with Ramadi, a city of 350,000 on the Euphrates in Iraq, that was 80 per cent destroyed by US-led air strikes in 2015. Parallels go further: civilians trapped in East Aleppo are understandably terrified of what the Syrian Mukhabara secret police would do to them if they leave and try to pass through Syrian government checkpoints. More
An Arab Commentator put it this way:
“Where US bombs fall there are only terrorists. But where Russian bombs fall there are only civilians. Understand?”
US PLUNGES INTO WAR WITH YEMEN
Anyone who believes the United States is not fighting enough wars in the Middle East can be happy this week. We have just plunged into another one. Twice in recent days, cruise missiles fired from an American destroyer have rained down on Yemen. The Pentagon, a practiced master of Orwellian language, calls this bombing “limited self-defense.” American forces were already involved in Yemen’s civil war. Since 2002, our drone attacks have reportedly killed more than 500 Yemenis, including at least 65 civilians. We are also supplying weapons and intelligence to Saudi Arabia, which has killed thousands of Yemenis in bombing raids over the last year and a half — including last week’s attack on a funeral in which more than 100 mourners were killed… The only important beneficiaries of our escalation are the Saudis and the US arms industry. Many Americans would like to end our Middle East conflicts. Instead we have just entered a new one. More
Saudi Arabia ‘deliberately targeting impoverished Yemen’s farms and agricultural industry’
…there is substantial evidence emerging that the Saudis and their “coalition” allies – and, I suppose, those horrid British “advisers” – are deliberately targeting Yemen’s tiny agricultural sector in a campaign which, if successful, would lead a post-war Yemeni nation not just into starvation but total reliance on food imports for survival. Much of this would no doubt come from the Gulf states which are currently bombing the poor country to bits… Academics have been amassing data from Yemen which strongly suggests that the Saudis’ Yemen campaign contains a programme for the destruction of rural livelihood. More
This Clinton Adviser Wants to Attack Iran to Help the Saudis Control Yemen
Michael Morell is a former acting director of the CIA and a national security adviser to Hillary Clinton — one who is widely expected to occupy a senior post in her administration. He is also an opponent of the Iran nuclear agreement, a defender of waterboarding, and an advocate for making Russia “pay a price” in Syria by covertly killing Putin’s soldiers. On Tuesday, Morell added another title to that résumé: proponent of going to war with Iran, for the sake of securing Saudi Arabia’s influence in Yemen… How many Americans (whose paychecks aren’t directly or indirectly subsidized by Gulf State monarchies) think keeping Yemen within Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence is a cause worth entering another Middle Eastern war over? … Morell is just one of many advisers Clinton has consulted with over the course of her campaign. And as Josh Rogin has noted, there is a group of intervention skeptics among her inner circle, who hope to beat back the bipartisan call for both an escalation of American involvement in the Syrian civil war and a more “muscular” approach in our dealings with Iran. More
Seven World-Historical Achievements of the Iraq Invasion of 2003
Hillary doesn’t recognize any of these seven points, which to recapitulate are:
+ US actions have greatly strengthened al-Qaeda + US actions have encouraged Kurdish nationalism (with unpredictable ramifications)
+ The US through its vicious illegal actions has destroyed the modern Iraqi state + US actions have solidified ties between Iran and Iraq’s majority Shiite community, strengthening a country still targeted for “regime change” + The invasion of Iraq and the regime change there exacerbated the historical Sunni-Shiite divide, and encouraged Saudi Arabia as the ultra-Islamist protector of the shrines to redouble its efforts to support extremist Sunnis everywhere in the region + The results of the invasion place Turkey and the U.S. at loggerheads over the question of Kurdish nationalist movements in both Iraq and Syria + US interventions in the Middle East and North Africa since 2001 have produced a massive refugee crisis, inflicted mainly on Europe… Never acknowledging what happened yesterday, never able to absorb historical lessons, determined to maintain and expend its global hegemony (just as that becomes absolutely impossible to do, because other nations rise too, and great nations like Spain and Britain actually get humbled over time), the U.S. under Clinton will likely head methodically towards a showdown with Russia. She wants so badly, to show she can do it. She’ll do it for women, everywhere, to show how strong a woman can be. More
NEWS NOT FIT TO PRINT?
The Historic UN Vote On Banning Nuclear Weapons
History was made at the United Nations today. For the first time in its 71 years, the global body voted to begin negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Eight nations with nuclear arms (the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, and Israel) opposed or abstained from the resolution, while North Korea voted yes. However, with a vote of 123 for, 38 against and 16 abstaining, the First Assembly decided “to convene in 2017 a United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.” The resolution effort, led by Mexico, Austria, Brazil Ireland, Nigeria and South Africa, was joined by scores of others… The Obama Administration was in fierce opposition. It lobbied all nations, particularly its allies, to vote no. More
THE GREAT DEMOCRATIC INVERSION
For decades, Democratic presidential candidates have been making steady gains among upper income whites and whites with college and postgraduate degrees. This year, however, is the first time in at least six decades that the Democratic nominee is positioned to win a majority of these upscale voters. According to the Oct. 20 Reuters-IPSOS tracking survey, Hillary Clinton now leads Donald Trump by 5.6 points among all whites earning $75,000 or more… According to an Oct. 23 ABC News poll, Clinton also leads among all white college graduates, 52-36. She has an unprecedented gender gap among these voters, leading 62-30 among college-educated white women and tying among college educated white men, 42-42. What these figures suggest is that the 2016 election will represent a complete inversion of the New Deal order among white voters. From the 1930s into the 1980s and early 1990s, majorities of downscale whites voted Democratic and upscale whites voted Republican. Now, looking at combined male and female vote totals, the opposite is true… Whites remain the majority in both political parties, 57 percent of Democratic voters and 86 percent of Republicans. White Democrats share a high level of optimism with the two largest Democratic minority constituencies, African-Americans and Hispanics. Working class African-Americans and Hispanics are, like their white counterparts without degrees, on the low end of the income distribution. When blacks and Hispanics compare their situations to those of their parents, they see their circumstances improving, in contrast to low income, non-college whites, who see a downward trajectory. More
combined male and female vote totals, the opposite is true… Whites remain the majority in both political parties, 57 percent of Democratic voters and 86 percent of Republicans. White Democrats share a high level of optimism with the two largest Democratic minority constituencies, African-Americans and Hispanics. Working class African-Americans and Hispanics are, like their white counterparts without degrees, on the low end of the income distribution. When blacks and Hispanics compare their situations to those of their parents, they see their circumstances improving, in contrast to low income, non-college whites, who see a downward trajectory. More
Voter Suppression is the Real Election Scandal
The integrity of this year’s election is under attack — but not in the way Donald Trump claims it is. Ahead of last week’s final debate, the Republican nominee called the election “rigged” dozens of times — in at least 20 tweets sent in the course of a single weekend as well as at rallies across the country in which he called on supporters to show up in “certain areas” and watch the polls… But the real problems with this year’s vote will be largely invisible on Election Day. Three years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a major section of the Voting Rights Act, opening the doors to new efforts to restrict voting. The impact of that decision will be felt at the polls for the first time this year. Measures passed in the aftermath of that decision — restrictive voter ID laws, new requirements for voter registration, cuts to early voting options and polling sites, and other schemes — are the real threat to the November 8 vote, civil rights advocates say. And these procedural obstacles to the polls pose more insidious, large-scale challenges to suffrage than the more egregious and illegal harassment of the sort Trump has repeatedly advocated. More
Billionaires’ Spending on 2016 Election Reaches $88 Million
Two dozen billionaires have spent $88 million on the 2016 presidential campaign, bankrolling an election in which both major-party nominees have railed against the influence of money in politics. Democrat Hillary Clinton has been the largest beneficiary of billionaires’ cash, with 19 of them donating a total of $70 million to her top allied super PAC, Priorities USA Action, according to the latest Federal Election Commission disclosure. Four billionaires have given $18 million to the set of super PACs backing Republican Donald Trump. More
The ‘P’ in PBS Should Stand for ‘Plutocratic’ or ‘Pentagon’
Because the United States fails to provide anything like adequate funding for public broadcasting, both PBS and National Public Radio (a regular vehicle for neoliberal business ideology) depend upon foundations, corporations and wealthy individuals to pay for much of their programming. Beneath their standard claims to have no interest in shaping public media content, these private funders have bottom-line agendas, meaning that their contributions come with strings attached—strings that undermine the integrity of the “independent” journalism they bankroll… What might seem more surprising, perhaps, is the remarkable extent to which the “P” in PBS often seems to stand for “Pentagon,” or perhaps “Presidential,” when it comes to foreign policy content. Whatever the global issue of the day or week, “NewsHour” anchors and their invited “experts” can be counted on to report and reflect in accord with the doctrinal assumption that Washington always operates with the best of intentions. They almost uniformly treat the U.S. as a great, benevolent and indispensable force for freedom, democracy, security, peace and order in a dangerous world full of evil and deadly actors. More
The verdict for those armed militants who took over a federal building is white privilege in action
It is impossible to ignore race here. These were a group of armed white people, mostly men, taking over a facility. Just imagine: What would happen if a group of armed black men, protesting police brutality, tried to take over a police facility and hold it hostage for more than a month? Would they even come out alive and get to trial? Would a jury find them and their cause relatable, making it easier to send them back home with no prison time? One doesn’t have to do much imagining here, either. The social science is pretty clear: People are much more likely to look at black people and see criminals and wrongdoers. They don’t get the privilege of innocence in the same way white people — including these militants in Oregon — do. More
Islamophobia in the Age of Trump
The frequency of anti-Muslim behavior in the United States is increasing at an alarming rate. A study released earlier this year by California State University-San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism found that incidents of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab violence in the United States increased drastically from 2014 to 2015, by 78.2% and 219% respectively, reaching levels that haven’t been seen since the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Council on Arab-Islamic Relations (CAIR) found that 2015 saw the highest number of attacks directed against mosques in any year since it began tracking such incidents in 2009. So far in 2016, the Huffington Post’s “Islamophobia tracker” has catalogued 289 anti-Muslim acts, which includes both violent and non-violent incidents. More
Police from 5 States Escalate Violence, Shoot Horses to Clear 1851 Treaty Camp
Over 300 police officers in riot gear, 8 ATVs, 5 armored vehicles, 2 helicopters, and numerous military-grade humvees showed up north of the newly formed frontline camp just east of Highway 1806. The 1851 Treaty Camp was set up this past Sunday directly in the path of the pipeline, on land recently purchased by DAPL. Today this camp, a reclamation of unceded Dakota territory affirmed as part of the Standing Rock Reservation in the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1851, was violently cleared. Both blockades established this past weekend to enable that occupation were also cleared. In addition to pepper spray and percussion grenades, shotguns were fired into the crowd with less lethal ammunition and a sound cannon was used (see images below). At least one person was tased and the barbed hook lodged in his face, just outside his eye. Another was hit in the face by a rubber bullet. More
the crowd with less lethal ammunition and a sound cannon was used (see images below). At least one person was tased and the barbed hook lodged in his face, just outside his eye. Another was hit in the face by a rubber bullet. More
TAKE AWAY MILITARY WEAPONS FROM POLICE!
Throughout the Black Lives Matter movement, nonviolent protesters have been bombarded with armed tanks, rubber bullets, and grenade launchers containing toxic tear gas. As we witnessed in Ferguson, Baltimore, Charlotte and elsewhere, peaceful demonstrations for racial justice and police accountability have been routinely met with large trucks of law enforcement officers dressed and armed for war-like combat. Police do not typically address white protesters in the same manner. The utilization of military equipment and tactics in local police departments fuels the widespread mentality that law enforcement officers, meant to protect and serve, are mere combatants in black and brown communities.
* * * *
BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID. . .
Clinton advisor Michael Morell put this sentiment in terms both more concise and grandiose:
“We’re back and we’re going to lead again.” (source)
HILLARY CLINTON: A Hawk in the Wings
Meanwhile, the candidate that challenged Obama as too naïve and peace-loving back in 2008 is poised to succeed him as president. Once again, she has staked out a more hawkish position. And this time she has a large chunk of the foreign policy elite behind her. As Greg Jaffe wrote last week in The Washington Post: “In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the White House — and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief.
The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy, via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.” More
Neocon endorses Clinton,
Calling her “2016’s real conservative” and “the candidate of the status quo”
Wall Street has thrown its weight behind Hillary Clinton. Some of the biggest names in the U.S. right-wing establishment have also expressed support for her. Another neocon added his name to the pro-Clinton list on Thursday. James Kirchick penned an op-ed in The Daily Beast titled “Hillary Clinton Is 2016’s Real Conservative — Not Donald Trump.” “Clinton is the candidate of the status quo, something that conservatives, by definition, are supposed to uphold,” Kirchick writes. More
US voters wary of expanding military presence overseas
Only 25 per cent of Americans would like the next president to expand the role of the US military overseas, according to a poll that underlines the cautious mood of voters about foreign policy. In the poll, only 14 per cent of respondents said US foreign policy had made the country more secure since 9/11, when it launched the more than 15 years of military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere… The sceptical public mood could be a test for Hillary Clinton if she is to win the election, given her push for the US to be more involved in the Syrian civil war, not least the creation of safe zones for refugees. More
* * * *
NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Obama’s Foreign Policy:
A HOSTAGE TO BIPARTISAN CONSENSUS
As we approach the final months of the Obama presidency, it’s clear that the “change” in foreign
policy that candidate Obama promised voters has not materialized. His pledges to end the Iraq War, to pursue a nuclear-free world, to improve relations with Russia, to act as an honest broker between Israel and Palestine, and to improve relations with the Arab world have all been left unfulfilled. That his likely successor, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is to the right of the president on matters of national security is, in a way, an all-too-fitting monument to an era of dashed expectations… It was widely assumed that Obama would pick up the pieces of the Bush years and exorcise hegemonic fantasies from the body politic. Instead, over his two terms in office, the convergence of the neoconservative and Wilsonian interventionist creeds has solidified into orthodoxy. No better evidence of this exists than the fact that the neocons who served as the instigators and defenders of George W. Bush’s foreign policy have become devoted supporters of Hillary Clinton. More
“change” in foreign
policy that candidate Obama promised voters has not materialized. His pledges to end the Iraq War, to pursue a nuclear-free world, to improve relations with Russia, to act as an honest broker between Israel and Palestine, and to improve relations with the Arab world have all been left unfulfilled. That his likely successor, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is to the right of the president on matters of national security is, in a way, an all-too-fitting monument to an era of dashed expectations… It was widely assumed that Obama would pick up the pieces of the Bush years and exorcise hegemonic fantasies from the body politic. Instead, over his two terms in office, the convergence of the neoconservative and Wilsonian interventionist creeds has solidified into orthodoxy. No better evidence of this exists than the fact that the neocons who served as the instigators and defenders of George W. Bush’s foreign policy have become devoted supporters of Hillary Clinton. More
THE DOCTRINE OF ARMED EXCEPTIONALISM
Through good times and bad, regardless of what’s actually happening in the world, one thing is certain: in the long run, the Pentagon budget won’t go down. It’s not that that budget has never been reduced. At pivotal moments, like the end of World War II as well as war's end in Korea and Vietnam, there were indeed temporary downturns, as there was after the Cold War ended. More recently, the Budget Control Act of 2011 threw a monkey wrench into the Pentagon’s plans for funding that would go ever onward and upward by putting a cap on the money Congress could pony up for it. The remarkable thing, though, is not that such moments have occurred, but how modest and short-lived they’ve proved to be… The overwhelming consensus in favor of a “cover the globe” military strategy has been broken from time to time by popular resistance to the idea of using war as a central tool of foreign policy. In such periods, getting Americans behind a program of feeding the military machine massive sums of money has generally required a heavy dose of fear. More
DENNIS KUCINICH:
Why Is the Foreign Policy Establishment Spoiling for More War? Look at Their Donors.
I remember other hearings where the Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $1 trillion in accounts, lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq, and rigged a missile-defense test so that an interceptor could easily home in on a target. War is first and foremost a profitable racket. How else to explain that in the past 15 years this city’s so called bipartisan foreign policy elite has promoted wars in Iraq and Libya, and interventions in Syria and Yemen, which have opened Pandora’s Box to a trusting world, to the tune of trillions of dollars, a windfall for military contractors. DC’s think “tanks” should rightly be included in the taxonomy of armored war vehicles and not as gathering places for refugees from academia. According to the front page of this past Friday’s Washington Post, the bipartisan foreign-policy elite recommends the next president show less restraint than President Obama. Acting at the urging of “liberal” hawks brandishing humanitarian intervention, read war, the Obama administration attacked Libya along with allied powers working through NATO… The self-identified liberal Center for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America’s current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on “mission accomplished.” CAP, according to a report in The Nation, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who make the bombers that CAP wants to rain hellfire on Syria. More
Media Roll Out Welcome Mat for 'Humanitarian' War in Syria
As she marches toward the US presidency, Hillary Clinton has stepped up her promotion of the idea that a no-fly zone in Syria could “save lives” and “hasten the end of the conflict” that has devastated that country since 2011… Beyond the opinion pages, media figures are pushing the “humanitarian” approach with varying degrees of subtlety. Meet the Press host Chuck Todd (10/16/16) recently pressed Vice President Joe Biden on the lack of a no-fly zone over Aleppo, suggesting that the Obama administration will “look back and wonder what if? What if? What if? What if?” …In Syria’s brutal war, meanwhile, humanitarian motives will presumably be utilized as a veneer for pursuing more fundamental goals, like neutralizing resistance to US/Israeli regional designs and promoting that profitable sort of chaos that produces massive arms sales. More
Pentagon Ignored Evidence of Civilian Casualties in ISIS Strikes
U.S. AUTHORITIES OVERSEEING the war against the Islamic State in Syria have failed to respond to evidence of hundreds of civilian casualties resulting from coalition airstrikes and potential violations of the laws of war, according to a startling new account from Amnesty International. In a press release issued Tuesday night, Amnesty said it has presented the Pentagon with evidence that 11 coalition airstrikes in Syria over the past two years appear to have led to the deaths of as many as 300 civilians — and that so far that evidence has been met with silence. More
COCKBURN: Aleppo vs. Mosul: Media Biases
But look at how differently the international media is treating a similar situation in Mosul, 300 miles east of Aleppo, where one million people and an estimated 5,000 Isis fighters are being encircled by the Iraqi army fighting alongside Kurdish Peshmerga and Shia and Sunni paramilitaries and with massive support from a US-led air campaign. In the case of Mosul, unlike Aleppo, the defenders are to blame for endangering civilians by using them as human shields and preventing them leaving. In East Aleppo, fortunately, there are no human shields – though the UN says that half the civilian population wants to depart – but simply innocent victims of Russian savagery. Destruction in Aleppo by Russian air strikes is compared to the destruction of Grozny in Chechnya sixteen years ago, but, curiously, no analogy is made with Ramadi, a city of 350,000 on the Euphrates in Iraq, that was 80 per cent destroyed by US-led air strikes in 2015. Parallels go further: civilians trapped in East Aleppo are understandably terrified of what the Syrian Mukhabara secret police would do to them if they leave and try to pass through Syrian government checkpoints. More
An Arab Commentator put it this way:
“Where US bombs fall there are only terrorists. But where Russian bombs fall there are only civilians. Understand?”
US PLUNGES INTO WAR WITH YEMEN
Anyone who believes the United States is not fighting enough wars in the Middle East can be happy this week. We have just plunged into another one. Twice in recent days, cruise missiles fired from an American destroyer have rained down on Yemen. The Pentagon, a practiced master of Orwellian language, calls this bombing “limited self-defense.” American forces were already involved in Yemen’s civil war. Since 2002, our drone attacks have reportedly killed more than 500 Yemenis, including at least 65 civilians. We are also supplying weapons and intelligence to Saudi Arabia, which has killed thousands of Yemenis in bombing raids over the last year and a half — including last week’s attack on a funeral in which more than 100 mourners were killed… The only important beneficiaries of our escalation are the Saudis and the US arms industry. Many Americans would like to end our Middle East conflicts. Instead we have just entered a new one. More
Saudi Arabia ‘deliberately targeting impoverished Yemen’s farms and agricultural industry’
…there is substantial evidence emerging that the Saudis and their “coalition” allies – and, I suppose, those horrid British “advisers” – are deliberately targeting Yemen’s tiny agricultural sector in a campaign which, if successful, would lead a post-war Yemeni nation not just into starvation but total reliance on food imports for survival. Much of this would no doubt come from the Gulf states which are currently bombing the poor country to bits… Academics have been amassing data from Yemen which strongly suggests that the Saudis’ Yemen campaign contains a programme for the destruction of rural livelihood. More
This Clinton Adviser Wants to Attack Iran to Help the Saudis Control Yemen
Michael Morell is a former acting director of the CIA and a national security adviser to Hillary Clinton — one who is widely expected to occupy a senior post in her administration. He is also an opponent of the Iran nuclear agreement, a defender of waterboarding, and an advocate for making Russia “pay a price” in Syria by covertly killing Putin’s soldiers. On Tuesday, Morell added another title to that résumé: proponent of going to war with Iran, for the sake of securing Saudi Arabia’s influence in Yemen… How many Americans (whose paychecks aren’t directly or indirectly subsidized by Gulf State monarchies) think keeping Yemen within Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence is a cause worth entering another Middle Eastern war over? … Morell is just one of many advisers Clinton has consulted with over the course of her campaign. And as Josh Rogin has noted, there is a group of intervention skeptics among her inner circle, who hope to beat back the bipartisan call for both an escalation of American involvement in the Syrian civil war and a more “muscular” approach in our dealings with Iran. More
Seven World-Historical Achievements of the Iraq Invasion of 2003
Hillary doesn’t recognize any of these seven points, which to recapitulate are:
+ US actions have greatly strengthened al-Qaeda + US actions have encouraged Kurdish nationalism (with unpredictable ramifications)
+ The US through its vicious illegal actions has destroyed the modern Iraqi state + US actions have solidified ties between Iran and Iraq’s majority Shiite community, strengthening a country still targeted for “regime change” + The invasion of Iraq and the regime change there exacerbated the historical Sunni-Shiite divide, and encouraged Saudi Arabia as the ultra-Islamist protector of the shrines to redouble its efforts to support extremist Sunnis everywhere in the region + The results of the invasion place Turkey and the U.S. at loggerheads over the question of Kurdish nationalist movements in both Iraq and Syria + US interventions in the Middle East and North Africa since 2001 have produced a massive refugee crisis, inflicted mainly on Europe… Never acknowledging what happened yesterday, never able to absorb historical lessons, determined to maintain and expend its global hegemony (just as that becomes absolutely impossible to do, because other nations rise too, and great nations like Spain and Britain actually get humbled over time), the U.S. under Clinton will likely head methodically towards a showdown with Russia. She wants so badly, to show she can do it. She’ll do it for women, everywhere, to show how strong a woman can be. More
NEWS NOT FIT TO PRINT?
The Historic UN Vote On Banning Nuclear Weapons
History was made at the United Nations today. For the first time in its 71 years, the global body voted to begin negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Eight nations with nuclear arms (the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, and Israel) opposed or abstained from the resolution, while North Korea voted yes. However, with a vote of 123 for, 38 against and 16 abstaining, the First Assembly decided “to convene in 2017 a United Nations conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.” The resolution effort, led by Mexico, Austria, Brazil Ireland, Nigeria and South Africa, was joined by scores of others… The Obama Administration was in fierce opposition. It lobbied all nations, particularly its allies, to vote no. More
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