Category: Afghanistan

  • “Over-the-horizon” air operations, possibly directed at the Taliban, may rely very heavily on drone assassination and drone targeting for manned aircraft.

    On July 2, fleeing questions from reporters about U.S. plans in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden sought refuge behind the July 4th Independence Day holiday, yet obliquely acknowledged that the U.S. will use some level of “over the horizon” air attacks to prevent the Taliban from taking power, attacks that will include drones and manned aircraft, possibly even B-52s.

    Here is a portion of President Biden’s remarkable exchange with the press, which occurred at the close of his comments on the June, 2021 jobs report:

    Q    Are you worried that the Afghan government might fall?  I mean, we are hearing about how the Taliban is taking more and more districts.

    The President:  Look, we were in that war for 20 years.  Twenty years.  And I think — I met with the Afghan government here in the White House, in the Oval.  I think they have the capacity to be able to sustain the government.  There are going to have to be, down the road, more negotiations, I suspect.  But I am — I am concerned that they deal with the internal issues that they have to be able to generate the kind of support they need nationwide to maintain the government.

    Q    A follow on that thought on Afghanistan —

    The President:  I want to talk about happy things, man.

    Q    If there is evidence that Kabul is threatened, which some of the intelligence reports have suggested, it could be in six months or thereabout, do you think you’ve got the capability to help provide any kind of air support, military support to them to keep the capital safe, even if the U.S. troops are obviously fully out by that time?

    The President:  We have worked out an over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added, but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have, which we’re helping them maintain.

    Q    Sir, on Afghanistan —

    The President:  I’m not going to answer any more quick question on Afghanistan.

    Q    Are you concerned —

    The President:  Look, it’s Fourth of July.

     *****

    When the President refers to “over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added” he is referring to a plan, that appears might cost $10 billion, to fly drones and manned attack aircraft from bases as far away as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to assist the current Afghan central government in defending itself against the Taliban.

    His statement is the first acknowledgement that  the “over-the-horizon” air operations, that reportedly may rely very heavily on drone assassination and drone targeting for manned aircraft, will be directed at the Taliban.  In Congressional testimony in June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that “over-the-horizon” operations would focus on “elements that can possibly conduct attacks against our homeland”, suggesting Al Qaeda and ISIS as targets but not foreclosing attacks against the Taliban.

    The President’s remarks about “over the horizon” as “value added” flowing into “but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have”, is reminiscent of former President Richard Nixon’s attempt to argue that the puppet government of Viet Nam was developing the power to defend itself, attempting to cover U.S. tracks out of the horribly disastrous U.S. colonization project in Viet Nam.

    “Our air strikes have been essential in protecting our own remaining forces and in assisting the South Vietnamese in their efforts to protect their homes and their country from a Communist takeover”, Nixon said in a 1972 speech to the nation.

    The apparent U.S. decision to continue to assist the Afghan central government from the air comes in company with a New York Times report saying that President Biden has placed “temporary limits on counterterrorism drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional battlefield zones like Afghanistan and Syria, and it has begun a broad review of whether to tighten Trump-era rules for such operations, according to officials.”

    A similar report in Foreign Affairs, says that there has been an apparent reduction in U.S. drone attacks, and details elements of a “bigger rethink” process that the Biden Administration is said to be going through to limit civilian deaths and reevaluate how the U.S. should respond to “the overseas terrorist threat.”  A goal of the Administration, the report says, is to end the U.S. “forever” wars.

    It must also be said, however, that these reports indicate that President Biden fully intends to continue the U.S. drone assassination/pre-emptive killing policy of Bush, Obama and Trump, possibly with more care for civilians casualties but in defiance of international principles of war, as outlined on BanKillerDrones.org, that would rule out the use of weaponized drones and military drone surveillance altogether whether inside or outside a recognized combat zone.

    It appears that the reformist talk from Biden officials, much of it unattributed and therefore having no accountability, is intended to divert and placate those of us citizens who are revulsed by continuing drone atrocities, such as those leading 113 peace, justice and humanitarian organizations who signed a letter demanding “an end to the unlawful program of lethal strikes outside any recognized battlefield, including through the use of drones.”  Apart from the view, noted above, that drone attacks and surveillance are illegal anywhere, we have the question of the U.S. having turned the entire world into a potential “recognized battlefield.”

    Even though U.S. ground forces have largely left Afghanistan, it is clear that the Biden administration considers Afghanistan a legitimate battlefield for U.S. air forces.

    In President Biden’s “value added” remark, one can see a clear message: regardless of talk of a more humanitarian policy of drone killing and ending “forever” wars, the president has decided that prolonged civil war in Afghanistan is in the interest of the U.S.  Possibly this is because continued turmoil in Afghanistan will be unsettling and preoccupying to her neighbors, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and China.  Possibly it is because a civil war will make it easier for corporations and banks to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral, fossil fuel and opium wealth.

    Certainly, continued U.S. air assaults in Afghanistan will generate money for U.S. military contractors.

    With continuing U.S. air and commando attacks, Afghanistan can turn into a Libya, a divided, stalemated, suffering, bleeding country, where Turkey, Russia and China test their weapons and seek advantage.

    Indeed, the U.S. is negotiating with Turkey, over the objection of the Taliban, to maintain “security” at the Kabul International Airport.  Undoubtedly, the Turkish political/military/corporate elite, who have their own expansionary ambitions, will use its drones, among them the semi-autonomous Kargu 2, to try to hold the airport and surrounding territory.

    The Black Alliance for Peace released a statement on June 25, opposing “any effort to prolong the U.S. war on the Afghan people, including efforts to keep the United States engaged in any form in Afghanistan.”   The statement expressed concern for “the continued operation of U.S. special forces and mercenaries (or contractors) in Afghanistan, as well as U.S.-pledged support for Turkish military defense of Kabul International Airport, a site that has continued to be a major U.S. military stronghold to support its imperial presence.”

    President Biden would do well to heed this statement, along with a petition to him, circulated by BanKillerDrones.org, urging no further U.S. air attacks against the Afghan people.

    Now that Independence Day has passed, perhaps the President will be more willing to answer questions about the real goals of “over the horizon.”

    The post Biden Acknowledges “Over the Horizon” Air Attacks Planned Against Taliban first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nick Mottern.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Zaka Mohsin, Riyadh,

    The Pakistani embassy in Kabul is taking measures for safe return of Pakistanis to Saudi Arabia via Afghanistan after Kingdom suspend flights operations to Afghanistan on July 4.

    According to the Pakistani ambassador in the Afghan capital Kabul, Pakistani workers were leaving for Saudi Arabia after completion of 14-day quarantine in Afghanistan but on July 4, after the flight operation was suspended, about 4,000 Pakistanis were stranded in Kabul.

    For their return, the Pakistani embassy in Kabul is taking credible measures to provide them accommodation and food, as well as transportation to Torkham border. Pakistani consulate also provides aid to reach their areas in Pakistan. So far, about 1,500 Pakistanis have been returned.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • From the Bagram Airbase they left, leaving behind a piece of the New York World Trade Centre that collapsed with such graphic horror on September 11, 2001.  As with previous occupiers and occupants, the powers that had made this venue a residence of war operations were cutting their losses and running.

    Over the years, the base, originally built by the Soviets in the 1950s and known to US personnel as Bagram Airfield, became a loud statement of occupation, able to hold up to 10,000 troops and sprawling across 30 square miles.  It was also replete with cholesterol hardening fast food restaurants (Pizza Hut, Burger King), jewellers, car dealerships and such amenities as swimming pools, spas and cinemas.

    Bagram also had room to accommodate the unfortunates captured in that anomalously worded “War on Terror”: detainees, many al-Qaeda suspects, faced torture in what came to be known as Afghanistan’s Guantanamo.  US forces relinquished control of the prison, now sporting the benign name of Parwan Detention Facility, to Afghan security forces in December 2014. Ill-treatment of prisoners continued.

    After two decades, it seemed that the US armed forces could not wait to leave.  The departure date, scheduled for September, was being brought forward, though President Joe Biden denied that anything had changed.  “A safe, orderly drawdown,” stated the Pentagon press secretary John Kirby, “enables us to maintain an ongoing diplomatic presence, support the Afghan people and the government, and prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for terrorists that threatens our homeland.”

    There was little fuss in the way things unfolded on July 1 – at least initially.  The New York Times observed that the final withdrawal “occurred with little fanfare and no public ceremony, and in an atmosphere of grave concern over the Afghan security forces’ ability to hold off Taliban advances across the country.”

    The signal for chaos and mayhem had been given.  Darwaish Raufi, Afghanistan’s district administrator for Bagram, found himself confronting an ominous spectacle.  There had been confusion and uncertainty about the logistics of the operation.  With the base unsecured, around 100 looters capitalised, seizing gas canisters and laptops.  “They were stopped and some have been arrested and the rest have been cleared from the base.”  The district governor was left puzzled.  “American soldiers should share information with the Afghan government, especially local officials, but they didn’t let me know.”

    US military spokesman Colonel Sonny Leggett disagreed.  “All handovers of Resolute Support bases and facilities, to include Bagram Airfield, have been closely coordinated, both with senior leaders from the government and with our Afghan partners in the security forces, including leadership of the locally based units respective to each base.”

    Across the country, the Taliban are smacking their lips in anticipation of further gains.  “We consider this withdrawal a positive step,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. “Afghans can get closer to stability and peace with the full withdrawal of foreign forces.”  So far, the peace negotiations move at snail-like speed.  The Taliban refuse to declare a ceasefire.  Districts in the country have been falling with regularity to their forces.  Demoralised Afghan soldiers have been leaving their posts, though this is justified on the basis of strategic soundness (urban centres need protection).

    With a security vacuum gapingly prominent in parts of the country, regional militias have promised to mount resistance.  “Having reached home,” Nishank Motwani, Deputy Director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation in Unit in Kabul gloomily remarked, “Americans and allied forces will now watch what they fought so hard to build over 20 years burn down from afar and knowing that the Afghan men and women they fought with risk losing everything.”

    Former UK chief of the defence staff Lord David Richards could hardly improve on that, telling the BBC that, “A country that we promised a huge amount to now faces … almost certain civil war, with the likelihood that the Taliban will get back to where they were in 2001, occupying most of the major cities and the majority of the country.”

    General Richard Dannant, formerly chief of the general staff, kept matters paternalistic; as with other civilising missions of imperial days past, he wrote of a task that had failed.  “Taliban force of arms has prevailed, and the people of that country have been denied the chance to choose a better way of life.”

    The Biden administration continues to offer its model of hollow assurance for an ally it has cut loose, accompanied by a promise to provide security assistance to the value of $3 billion in 2022.  The President’s meeting with President Ashraf Ghani and chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah on June 25 saw the recapitulation of unconvincing themes.  All three “concurred on the need for unity among Afghan leaders in support of peace and stability”.  Biden “reaffirmed the US commitment to fully support intra-Afghan negotiations.”  Despite the departure of US troops, “the strong bilateral partnership will continue.”

    In a State Department briefing on July 1, officials continued to patch up the façade of support.  When asked by a journalist how the US could claim to be supporting the Afghan government “when we’re not going to be there”, department spokesperson Ned Price was prepared with some casuistry: “we are withdrawing our military forces, as the President announced, but we intend to maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul.”  The country would not be abandoned; support would be undiminished.

    At a White House press conference, Biden suggested how far down Afghanistan, and its fate, features in US policy circles.  In a moment of frankness, he put a halt to questions on that doomed country and wished to “talk about happy things, man.  I’m not going to answer any more questions on Afghanistan.”  It was a matter of priorities.  “It’s the holiday weekend. I’m going to celebrate it.  There’s great things happening.”  Just not in Afghanistan.

    The post Leaving Bagram Airbase: The Day the US Imperium Turned Tail first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UK asylum queues have grown massively since 2010. New figures obtained by the Refugee Council say that waiting lists are nine times longer than they were a decade ago. But a quick look at where asylum seekers are coming from tells a very important story. Thousands are fleeing countries where the UK and its major allies have waged literal or economic wars.

    The Refugee Council’s new report, titled Living in Limbo, warns that as of March 2021 there were over 66,000 asylum seeker awaiting “an initial decision from the Home Office“. This is nine times the number of people waiting in 2010.

    Interventions

    When countries of origin are taken into account, the long list of asylum seekers starts to make sense. For instance, a 2019 House of Commons report lists Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia and Venezuela, as the top five asylum seeking nationalities in the EU. Pakistan, Nigeria, and Iran all made the top ten. These are counties which have suffered, or are suffering, occupation or intervention by the UK and its allies.

    UN figures for 2020 on UK asylum put Iraq and Iran in the top four. The same document highlights that Iraqi and Iranian children were very prominent among Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) figures.

    Right-wing claims

    Despite right-wing claims, UN figures show that the UK takes few refugees relative to other countries. The vast majority stay in their “region of displacement”. Turkey and Pakistan had the most as of 2019, with 3.6 million and 1.4 million respectively.

    The UK also doesn’t have a high number of asylum seekers overall. Again, according to UN figures, Germany, France, Spain, and Greece all have tens of thousands more.

    Offshoring

    This hasn’t stopped UK officials pushing for hardline policies to deal with asylum seekers and refugees.

    On 28 June, it was reported that the UK was again considering ‘offshoring’ asylums seekers like Australia, whose refugee policies have been widely criticised.

    UK officials are in talks with Denmark, Al Jazeera reported. In June, the Danes passed a law to deport refugee outside the EU And Rwanda was mentioned as a possible destination for asylum seekers.

    Accountability?

    Bashing poor and desperate people is what UK governments are all about. But the figures tell a story. A majority of displaced people in the EU, and many who make it to the UK, are victims of UK foreign policy. There are reasons that places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria are so well represented in refugee statistics and the UK’s ever-growing asylum-seeker backlog.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Takver.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • “On the morning of September 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld ran to the fire at the Pentagon to assist the wounded and ensure the safety of survivors,” expressed a mournful George W. Bush in a statement.  “For the next five years, he was in steady service as a wartime secretary of defense – a duty he carried out with strength, skill, and honor.”

    Long before Donald Trump took aim at irritating facts and dissenting eggheads, Donald Rumsfeld, two times defense secretary and key planner behind the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was doing his far from negligible bit. When asked at his confirmation hearing about what worried him most when he went to bed at night, he responded accordingly: intelligence.  “The danger that we can be surprised because of a failure of imagining what might happen in the world.”

    Hailing from Chicago, he remained an almost continuous feature of the Republic’s politics for decades, burying himself in the business-government matrix.  He was a Congressman three times.  He marked the Nixon and Ford administrations, respectively serving as head of the Office of Economic Opportunity and Defense Secretary.  At 43, he was the youngest defense secretary appointee in the imperium’s history.

    He returned to the role of Pentagon chief in 2001, though not before running the pharmaceutical firm G.D. Searle and making it as a Fortune 500 CEO.  It was under his stewardship that the US Food and Drugs Administration finally approved the controversial artificial sweetener aspartame.  A report by a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry had claimed that the drug “might induce brain tumors.”  This did not phase Rumsfeld, undeterred by such fanciful notions as evidence.

    With Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980, and Rumsfeld’s membership of the transition team, the revolving door could go to work. The new FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., was selected while Rumsfeld remained Searle’s CEO.  When Searle reapplied for approval of aspartame, Hayes, as the new FDA commissioner, appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the 1980 findings.  When it became evident that a 3-2 outcome approving the ban was in the offing, Hayes appointed a sixth person.  The deadlocked vote was broken by Hayes, who favoured aspartame.

    In responding to the attacks of September 11, 2001 on US soil, Rumsfeld laid the ground for an assault on inconvenient evidence.  As with aspartame, he was already certain about what he wanted.  Even as smoke filled the corridors of the Pentagon, punctured by the smouldering remains of American Airlines Flight 77, Rumsfeld was already telling the vice-chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff General Richard Myers to find the “best info fast … judge whether good enough [to] hit SH@same time – not only UBL.” (Little effort is needed to work out that SH was Saddam Hussein and UBL Usama/Osama Bin Laden.)

    Experts were given a firm trouncing – what would they know?  With Rumsfeld running the Pentagon, the scare mongers and ideologues took the reins, all working on the Weltanschauung summed up at that infamous press conference of February 12, 2002.  When asked if there was any evidence as to whether Iraq had attempted to or was willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, given “reports that there is no evidence of a direct link”, Rumsfeld was ready with a tongue twister.  “There are known knowns.  There are things we know we know.  We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.  But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”  This was being frightfully disingenuous, given that the great known for Rumsfeld was the need to attack Iraq.

    To that end, he authorised the creation of a unit run by the under-secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, known as the Office of Special Plans, to examine intelligence on Iraq’s capabilities independently of the CIA.  Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who served in the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit a year prior to the invasion, described the OSP’s operations in withering terms.  “They’d take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don’t belong together.”

    One of Rumsfeld’s favourite assertions – that Iraq had a viable nuclear weapons program – did not match the findings behind closed doors. “Our knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear) weapons program,” claimed a report by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “is based largely – perhaps 90% – on analysis of imprecise intelligence.”

    None of this derailed the juggernaut: the US was going to war.  Not that Rumsfeld was keen to emphasise his role in it.  “While the president and I had many discussions about the war preparations,” he notes in his memoirs, “I do not recall him ever asking me if I thought going to war with Iraq was the right decision.”

    With forces committed to both Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States found itself in the situation Rumsfeld boastfully claimed would never happen.  Of this ruinously bloody fiasco, Rumsfeld was dismissive: “stuff happens.”  Despite such failings, a list of words he forbade staff from using was compiled, among them “quagmire”, “resistance” and “insurgents”.  Rumsfeld, it transpired, had tried regime change on the cheap, hoping that a modest military imprint was all that was necessary. The result: the US found itself in Iraq from March 2003 to December 2011, and then again in 2013 with the rise of Islamic State.  Afghanistan continues to be garrisoned, with the US scheduled to leave a savaged country by September.

    Rumsfeld was not merely a foe of facts that might interfere with his policy objective.  Conventions and laws prohibiting torture were also sneered at.  On December 2, 2002, he signed a memorandum from General Counsel William J. Haynes II authorising the use of 20-hour interrogations, stress positions and the use of phobias for Guantanamo Bay detainees.  In hand writing scrawled at the bottom of the document, the secretary reveals why personnel should not be too soft on their quarry, as he would “stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”  The results were predictably awful, and revelations of torture by US troops at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 led him to offer his resignation, which President Bush initially rejected.

    By November 2006, military voices had turned against him.  With the insurgency in full swing and Iraq sliding into chaos, the Army Times called for the secretary’s resignation.  “Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised.  And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear the brunt.”  Bush eventually relented.

    It is interesting that so little of this was remarked upon during the Trump era, seen as a disturbing diversion from the American project.  When Trump came to office, Democrats and others forgave all that came before, ignoring the manure that enriched the tree of mendacity.  The administration of George W. Bush was rehabilitated.

    In reflecting on his documentary on Rumsfeld Errol Morris found himself musing like his protagonist.  “He’s a mystery to me, and in many ways, he remains a mystery to me – except for the possibility that there might not be a mystery.”  The interlocutor had turned into his subject.

    The post The Known Knowns of Donald Rumsfeld first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Secret military documents found at a Kent bus stop show us how British foreign policy works. The papers were reportedly found by a member of the public and then ended up with the BBC.

    The documents contained important details of a naval confrontation between Russian forces and a UK warship. And an investigation is being conducted into their loss. The documents provide a brief snapshot of the UK’s international conduct and also ask serious questions about it.

    Crimea clash

    On 23 June, the destroyer HMS Defender passed close to waters claimed by Russia. The ship had left Odessa, where UK defence firms had signed a deal with Ukraine to build military bases and supply patrol ships.

    Aboard were BBC journalists. Defender found itself ‘buzzed’ by Russian aircraft and ships. The journalists filmed the events. And the entire incident was framed as one of Russian aggression.

    However, the surprise discovery of the papers turns the UK narrative on its head.

    Theatre

    Among the details revealed by the BBC after receiving the documents were plans for the Crimean mission, dubbed Op [Operation] DitroIte. And the BBC‘s reporting appears to show officials discussing possible outcomes of the ship’s passage. Their comments suggest that the UK sought an aggressive reaction from Russia.

    A Powerpoint slide in the files shows two possible routes. One was close to Crimea and likely to attract what officials term a “welcoming party”. But the other did not pass through contested waters.

    The BBC reported:

    Alongside the military planning, officials anticipated competing versions of events.

    We have a strong, legitimate narrative”, they said, noting that the presence of the embedded journalists (from the BBC and Daily Mail) on board the destroyer “provides an option for independent verification of HMS Defender’s action.

    Arms exports

    The documents contained details of arms exports.

    The BBC was cagey about what it disclosed. On the arms exports its says:

    The bundle includes updates on arms exports campaigns, including sensitive observations about areas where Britain might find itself competing with European allies.

    The shadow war

    The files also suggested that high-level discussions were underway about Afghanistan troop deployments after withdrawal this year.

    Because the US appears to have requested UK special forces troops stay in the country after withdrawal in 2021. The BBC reported few details, saying they could endanger lives.

    The files acknowledged great danger to any troops who remain, for instance:

    “Any UK footprint in Afghanistan that persists… is assessed to be vulnerable to targeting by a complex network of actors,” it says, noting that “the option to withdraw completely remains.”

    Behind-the-scenes

    Naturally, the BBC released very little about the files.

    And it appears the Crimea incident was stage-managed at the British end to shape public perceptions. So it seems quite likely the BBC were onboard to report the UK narrative.

    These files may only represent a snapshot. But subjected to stage-managed events like Crimea, it’s no wonder the public can’t easily understand Britain’s role in the world. Moreover, serious questions need to be asked about how the UK media works with the UK military.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Royal Navy

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The Biden administration announced that it will accelerate plans to relocate Afghans who worked with the U.S. military. Their situation demands the most urgent response possible.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Afghanistan – The COVID-19 pandemic has been a death knell to so many industries in Afghanistan. Charities and aid agencies have even warned that the economic dislocation could spark widespread famine. But one sector is still booming: the illicit opium trade. Last year saw Afghan opium poppy cultivation grow by over a third while counter-narcotics operations dropped off a cliff. The country is said to be the source of over 90% of all the world’s illicit opium, from which heroin and other opioids are made. More land is under cultivation for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca production across all of Latin America, with the creation of the drug said to directly employ around half a million people.

    The post How The CIA Turned Afghanistan Into A Failed Narco-State appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Listen to a reading of this article:

    Your efforts to understand the world will fail unless you account for the fact that (A) echo chamber dynamics have a vastly under-appreciated effect on the way we all take in information, and (B) that rich and powerful people are actively trying to manipulate your perception of reality.

    The correct lesson from Afghanistan instantly beginning to revert back to Taliban control the moment the western occupation ends is not that the occupation needs to continue, it’s that it should never have happened in the first place.

    “Oh no, bad things are happening because we’re leaving!” No, bad things are happening because you went in. You spent two decades hammering that poor nation with bombs and war crimes, and now they’re just going right back to where they were before you inflicted that upon them. Everything that’s happening in Afghanistan today is the fault of the invaders.

    The argument that the occupation has been a boon for human rights is just plain false, and is premised on the idea that the western empire should invade every nation with illiberal cultural values and force it to change at gunpoint. Even if that ridiculous premise were accepted, it has been clearly established that such a thing is impossible.

    How fucking obnoxious is it that westerners are now wringing their hands over the fact that when they stop forcing Afghanistan to be a certain way at gunpoint, the fate of Afghanistan starts being determined by Afghans? Enough with this white man’s burden bullshit, freaks.

    Don’t tell people not to fantasize about Jeff Bezos’ icy body spinning through the vacuum of space for all eternity. It’s kink-shaming.

    How to be an American leftist:

    • Focus exclusively on domestic policy in the most warmongering nation on earth
    • Criticize governments who are resisting US interventionism instead of US interventionism
    • Pay more attention to obscure abstract concepts than nonstop mass murder

    US politicians always have Twitter bios like “Father of Kelly, husband of Leanne (she’s the real boss!), VERY amateur shower singer,” instead of like, “Rapist of Syria, murderer of Yemeni kids, destroyer of your children’s future.”

    Yemen alone completely invalidates the moral authority of the US-centralized power alliance to determine what rules the world should play by.

    It’s not actually possible to be excessively critical of the US empire. There’s a common notion that there needs to be some kind of “balance” between criticism of the US power alliance and its enemies. No there doesn’t; the US government is objectively far worse than any other. No other government is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, working to destroy any nation which disobeys it, and waging nonstop wars which have killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century.

    Criticizing the US empire far more than its rivals is balance; criticizing it the same as you’d criticize US-targeted governments is what would be imbalanced, because the US and its allies are far, far more murderous and destructive than anyone else. It should be criticized more. You’re not being impartial if you pretend the US is as bad as China, Russia, Iran, etc; you’re being heavily biased in favor of the US, because you’re greatly helping to advance the interests of the far worse government by placing it on equal footing with the others.

    You see so many dry, elitist wankers acting like they’re being detached and impartial by treating all governments equally, when in reality they’re being anything but. All governments are not equal; one is clearly and demonstrably far, far more destructive than any of the others.

    It’s just so amazing how many leftists yell at journalists like Aaron Maté and Glenn Greenwald for using Tucker Carlson’s show to get important perspectives out to a mainstream audience compared to how few leftists yell at other mass media outlets for refusing to platform those important perspectives at all. Like there’s a whole sector of Twitter which seems to spend all its energy bitching about anti-imperialists going on Carlson to share anti-imperialist perspectives, and if you search their tweets you’ll find zero posts yelling at CNN or MSNBC for never platforming anti-imperialists.

    Dissident ideas need to get out to the mainstream. The fact that no other outlets ever platform those ideas besides Tucker Carlson is the thing which should outrage people.

    If you’re not despised by the Intercept-TYT-Bellingcat media faction, your work probably isn’t that good.

    So much of what the CIA used to do covertly it now does overtly; NED, working in media punditry, etc. Pretty soon they’ll just be openly selling narcotics door to door like Girl Scout cookies.

    Fun fact: among people who tell you you’re only socialist because you’ve never studied economics, exactly zero percent of them have ever read a book by a Marxian economist.

    If I were a thieving oligarch or a murderous imperialist I would be very happy that Americans are all focused on arguing about critical race theory.

    Come read my superintelligent Marxist essay about why the left should remain a highly exclusive club no bigger than the size of a public library speaking event. Medium says it’s just a 97-minute read. It’s got over six views and counting. Hope you like footnotes!

    Hey remember when Wonder Woman came out the same year Hillary Clinton was supposed to become president and invade Syria, and the villain was a guy who murders villagers with poison gas, including children? That was a bit weird, huh?

    Like there was literally a scene where Wonder Woman finds a village of civilians killed with poison gas, and screams about how awful the bad guys are for “Killing people they cannot see! Children. Children!!” How many other superhero movies have you seen where the bad guy just kills kids with poison gas?

    Hillary had been openly planning to invade Syria with tens of thousands of US troops to cripple Assad’s air defenses and control Syrian air space, a very dangerous and deadly move which would have required a lot of consent manufacturing.

    And you can say well it was set in World War 1, poison gas was a big thing then. Okay, but why set it in World War 1? The character Wonder Woman didn’t exist until 1941. There was no reason it had to be set during a time when poison gas was a big thing, but they chose to anyway.

    They say youth is wasted on the young. No, youth is wasted on schoolwork.

    Psychedelics are useful not for the hallucinations they provide but for the hallucinations they remove.

    I have a conspiracy theory that plutocrats conspire with secretive government agencies to advance murderous and exploitative agendas, and I have another conspiracy theory that some deep force of nature within us is conspiring to awaken humanity from the propaganda of our rulers.

    Humanity is becoming more conscious. Awkwardly, sloppily, like a toddler, we’re becoming more and more aware of what’s going on inside us and what’s going on outside us. There are a lot of ugly things which wish to remain hidden as the light expands, but they can’t hide forever.

    _________________________

    The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at  or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi or . If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded,  to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, 

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Renters and housing advocates attend a protest to cancel rent and avoid evictions in front of a court house on August 21, 2020, in Los Angeles, California.

    Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people have found themselves out of work, clinging to credit cards or a savings account, making use of the local food bank, and worrying about making the rent each month as the cash dried up.

    The relief packages passed by Congress were a lifeline for many, from the checks to the extended unemployment benefits and, perhaps most importantly, the eviction protections for those who simply couldn’t make rent because there was no work. The peril was ever-present, even with that help; if that firewall fell and landlords were allowed to evict for unpaid rent, the avalanche of immediate homelessness could have quite possibly been a country-killing event. Untold thousands put out on the street in the middle of a lethal pandemic? Unspeakable.

    Every time the nation has come to the expiration deadline for the last set of eviction protections, landlord coalitions pushed to have them end and renter’s groups pleaded to have them extended. To this point, they have been extended each time, but protecting people from the collapse of the economy has become another conservative plaything; a number of Republican governors have moved to slash unemployment benefits under the long-running racist, classist lie that relief money makes people not want to work. How soon until they try to apply that argument to rent?

    On Monday, however, the state of California, responding to sustained pressure from organizers and activists, showed the country a whole new way to go:

    Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will pay off all the past-due rent that accumulated in the nation’s most populated state because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate…. California has $5.2 billion to pay off people’s rent, money from multiple aid packages approved by Congress. That appears to be more than enough to cover all of the unpaid rent in the state, according to Jason Elliott, senior counselor to Newsom on housing and homelessness.

    While employment among middle- and high-wage jobs has exceeded pre-pandemic levels, employment rates for people earning less than $27,000 a year are down more than 38% since January 2020, according to Opportunity Insights, an economic tracker based at Harvard University. “The stock market may be fine, we may be technically reopened, but people in low-wage jobs — which are disproportionately people of color — are not back yet,” said Madeline Howard, senior attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

    How deeply embedded into the national psyche is the capitalist ethos? If an announcement like this came under the headline, “Spaceship From Planet XQ41 Appears Above Sacramento, Pays All Rent, Departs Through Hole in Sky,” my level of surprise would have been pretty much the same. How long was I asleep last night? What country is this?

    Bless my heart, it’s the United States of America, where government — local, state and federal — can actually help people if we choose to make doing so a priority. The federal government did so with the relief bills, states like California took their own necessary steps like this, and local governments along with activists labored mightily to keep as many people afloat as possible. Cries of “socialism” were muted for much of the pandemic, because even a Republican knows a boat with no bottom is going to sink no matter what Ronald Reagan or Grover Norquist has to say about it.

    To be sure, California’s historically robust economy is one of the main reasons why this action was possible. “The most trusted measure of economic strength says California is the world-beater among democracies,” reports Bloomberg News. “The state’s gross domestic product increased 21 percent during the past five years, dwarfing No. 2 New York (14 percent) and No. 3 Texas (12 percent), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gains added $530 billion to the Golden State, 30 percent more than the increase for New York and Texas combined and equivalent to the entire economy of Sweden. Among the five largest economies, California outperforms the U.S., Japan and Germany with a growth rate exceeded only by China.”

    Again, we return to the idea of priorities. President Bill Clinton amassed a huge budget surplus at the end of his second term, but it was all but gone by April 2001 because the Bush administration gave it away to its rich friends in the form of tax breaks. The rest of us — many of us, anyway — got $300 and a suddenly fragile national economy that was almost immediately knocked reeling by September 11. The rest of those funds, along with trillions more, were squandered on two failed wars that stole the economic future from a generation of Americans.

    In 2001 and 2002, Congress passed Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to lay the groundwork for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The economic damage done by the money wasted on these bloody endeavors is almost impossible to quantify, but real enough to make California’s statewide rent amnesty seem a laughable fantasy, until it happened.

    Last week, almost 20 years after its inception, the repeal of the 2002 AUMF regarding Iraq was passed by the House. Its ultimate demise will be voted on by the Senate on June 22. The far more muscular 2001 AUMF remains intact, but there is a groundswell of support for ending it, as well. Congress has to deal with its little brother first, and then we shall see.

    Among many other shabby things, the combined 39 years given to those two authorizations were the sign and signal of our national priorities. The money spent on those wars left us uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19, as all the social and medical infrastructure needed to combat it was revealed to be cash-starved and withered to the point of collapse. Only when we embraced some “socialist” policy priorities were we able to pull back from the brink. Note well: Rep. Barbara Lee was right.

    Newsom could have argle-bargled about “job creators” and pulled a Bush, using his state’s budget surplus as an ATM for the wealthy and corporations. Instead, thanks to pressure from progressives, he paid the rent and delivered billions in tax relief to small businesses affected by the pandemic. The fact that this is remarkable tells us all we need to know about how far gone our priorities have become, but more importantly, it tells us what we can accomplish if we choose to change them.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Fazal Khaliq, Washington D.C.,

    A virtual meeting of American and Pakistani journalists was arranged with Senator Chris Van Hollen to explain the Pak-Afghan peace, trade and economic development bill. The event was hosted by US Democratic leader Tahir Javed.

    The new government took the office in US and serious efforts are being made for peace, progress and economic development in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

    New cabinet plans are occurring to create industrial zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which will boost economic growth and reduce unemployment in both the countries.

    Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen has introduced a bill in the US Senate on the same road map.The key points are that finished goods in these industrial zones will be exported to the US, which will be duty free.

    According to economists, the development of Pakistan and Afghanistan is interdependent. If the two countries work together to promote industry and trade, the country’s problems and unemployment can be reduced.

    The virtual conference was attended by Shahid Ahmad Khan from Boston along with prominent Pakistani journalists Sohail Warraich, Muhammad Malik, Kamran Shahid, Adil Abbasi, Shazia Zeeshan, Rehman Azhar, Farrukh Potafi and Shehzad Iqbal.

    Journalists also questioned the policies of the new US administration

    Democrat leader Tahir Javed says US currently exports 5 billion to 6 billion from Pakistan. If the house pass this bill then this export foretasted be increase 10 percent and this 6 billion export arise to 50 to 60 billion dollars and with this, Pakistan will make rapid progress.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Carey Mulligan on Syria, playwright James Graham on the Troubles … the Imperial War Museums’ new podcast brings celebrities and experts together to understand recent armed struggles

    Comedian and author Deborah Frances-White is sitting at a table, in the shadow of a Spitfire which soars above her head. She is being interrogated on everything she knows about one of the most violent conflicts in recent decades. What comes to mind when she thinks of the Yugoslav wars? “I think of words like Milošević, Serbo-Croatia, Bosnia … I think there’s a star on the flag?” she flounders. “I remember there was a Time magazine cover with a man at the end of the war.”

    Frances-White is in the hot seat because she is a guest on Conflict of Interest, a new podcast from the Imperial War Museums (IWM) – the Spitfire above her head is hung from the ceiling of its London museum’s atrium, and her interrogator is Carl Warner, the IWM’s head of narrative and curatorial.

    I think about all the things I don’t know, all the time, and I feel very ashamed

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Within hours of President Joe Biden’s announcement that US forces will leave Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, objections and remonstrations appeared across US media. These protests are nearly all disingenuous, false and specious, and meant to utilize fear to continue a tragic and purposeless war.

    The post What critics of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan get wrong appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Web Desk,

    The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has adopted a resolution demanding Israel to stop atrocious attacks on innocent Palestinian civilians in violation of international law and United Nations resolutions.

    The resolution was adopted by the Virtual Open-Ended Extraordinary Meeting of OIC’s Executive Committee at Level of Foreign Ministers on Sunday.

    The 57-nation league warned that the continuation of barbaric attacks by Israel would put regional stability at risk.

    The OIC asked Israel to respect Muslims’ access to Al Aqsa Mosque and stop settlers from forcibly evicting Palestinian families from their homes.

    Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud opened the meeting by urging the global community to end the escalation in violence and revive peace negotiations based on a two-state solution.

    He urged the world to play its part for a peaceful solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict.

    The United Nations Security Council came under fire for not playing due role to restore peace to the region.

    “De-escalation and the highest degree of restraint are important to avoid dragging the region to new levels of instability,” said UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation Reem al-Hashimy.

    “The massacre of Palestinian children today follows the purported normalization,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. “This criminal and the genocidal regime has once again proven that friendly gestures only aggravate its atrocities.”

    Zarif accused Israel of genocide and crimes against humanity.

    “Make no mistake: Israel only understands the language of resistance and the people of Palestine are fully entitled to their right to defend themselves,” Zarif said.

    “The plight of the Palestinian people is the bleeding wound of the Islamic world today,” Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar said.

    Reportedly, more than 180 Palestinians have so far killed in Gaza with 1,230 people wounded in Israeli attacks.

    Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called for an international protection mechanism for Palestinian civilians and told the OIC that Israel should be held accountable for war crimes and that the International Criminal Court could play a role.

    The OIC reiterated its rejection and condemnation of the ongoing Israeli settlement colonization of occupied Palestinian land, including East Jerusalem and the establishment of a racial segregation system there.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.

    – William Casey, CIA Director, February. 1981

    It is well known that the endless U.S. war on terror was overtly launched following the mass murders of September 11, 2001 and the linked anthrax attacks.   The invasion of Afghanistan and the Patriot Act were immediately justified by those insider murders, and subsequently the wars against Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc.  So too the terrorizing of the American people with constant fear-mongering about imminent Islamic terrorist attacks from abroad that never came.

    It is less well known that the executive director of the U.S. cover story – the fictional 9/11 Commission Report – was Philip Zelikow, who controlled and shaped the report from start to finish.

    It is even less well known that Zelikow, a professor at the University of Virginia, was closely associated with Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Dickey Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Brent Scowcroft, et al. and had served in various key intelligence positions in both the George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. In 2011 President Obama named him to his President’s Intelligence Advisory Board as befits bi-partisan elite rule and coverup compensation across political parties.

    Perhaps it’s unknown or just forgotten that The Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission repeatedly called for Zelikow’s removal, claiming that his appointment made a farce of the claim that the Commission was independent.

    Zelikow said that for the Commission to consider alternative theories to the government’s claims about Osama bin Laden was akin to whacking moles.  This is the man, who at the request of his colleague Condoleezza Rice, became the primary author of (NSS 2002) The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, that declared that the U.S. would no longer abide by international law but was adopting a policy of preemptive war, as declared by George W. Bush at West Point in June 2002.  This was used as justification for the attack on Iraq in 2003 and was a rejection of the charter of the United Nations.

    So, based on Zelikow’s work creating a magic mountain of deception while disregarding so-called molehills, we have had twenty years of American terror wars around the world in which U.S. forces have murdered millions of innocent people.  Wars that will be continuing for years to come despite rhetoric to the contrary.  The rhetoric is simply propaganda to cover up the increasingly technological and space-based nature of these wars and the use of mercenaries and special forces.

    Simultaneously, in a quasi-volte-face, the Biden administration has directed its resources inward toward domestic “terrorists”: that is, anyone who disagrees with its policies.  This is especially aimed at those who question the COVID-19 story.

    Now Zelikow has been named to head a COVID Commission Planning Group based at the University of Virginia that is said to prepare the way for a National COVID Commission.  The group is funded by the Schmidt Futures, the Skoll Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and Stand Together, with more expected to join in.  Zelikow, a member of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program Advisory Panel, will lead the group that will work in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Stand together indeed: Charles Koch, Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, the Rockefellers, et al. funders of disinterested truth.

    So once again the fox is in the hen house.

    If you wistfully think the corona crisis will soon come to an end, I suggest you alter your perspective.  Zelikow’s involvement, among other things, suggests we are in the second phase of a long war of terror waged with two weapons – military and medical – whose propaganda messaging is carried out by the corporate mainstream media in the pursuit of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset. Part one has so far lasted twenty years; part two may last longer. You can be certain it won’t end soon and that the new terrorists are domestic dissidents.

    Did anyone think the freedoms lost with The Patriot Act were coming back some day?  Does anyone think the freedoms lost with the corona virus propaganda are coming back?  Many people probably have no idea what freedoms they lost with the Patriot Act, and many don’t even care.

    And today?  Lockdowns, mandatory mask wearing, travel restrictions, requirements to be guinea pigs for vaccines that are not vaccines, etc.?

    Who remembers the Nuremberg Codes?

    And they thought they were free, as Milton Mayer wrote about the Germans under Hitler.  Like frogs in a pot of cold water, we need to feel the temperature rising before it’s too late.  The dial is turned to high heat now.

    But that was so long ago and far away, right?  Don’t exaggerate, you say.  Hitler and all that crap.

    Are you thankful now that government spokespeople are blatantly saying that they will so kindly give us back some freedoms if we only do what they’re told and get “vaccinated” with an experimental biological agent, wear our masks, etc.? Hoi polloi are supposed to be grateful to their masters, who will grant some summer fun until they slam the door shut again.

    Pfizer raked in $3.5 billion from vaccine sales in the first quarter of 2021, the first three months of the vaccine rollouts, and the company projects $26 billion for the year.  That’s one vaccine manufacturer.  Chump change?  Only a chump would not realize that Pfizer is the company that paid $2.3 billion in Federal criminal fines in 2009 – the largest ever paid by a drug company – for being a repeat offender in the marketing of 13 different drugs.

    Meanwhile, the commission justifying the government’s claims about COVID-19 and injections (aka “vaccines”) will be hard at work writing their fictive report that will justify ex post facto the terrible damage that has occurred and that will continue to occur for many years.  Censorship and threats against dissidents will increase.  The disinformation that dominates the corporate mainstream media will of course continue, but this will be supplemented by alternative media that are already buckling under the pressure to conform.

    The fact that there has been massive censorship of dissenting voices by Google/ YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc., and equally massive disinformation by commission and omission across media platforms, should make everyone ask why.  Why repress dissent?  The answer should be obvious but is not.

    The fact that so many refuse to see the significance of this censorship clearly shows the hypnotic effects of a massive mind control operation.

    Name calling and censorship are sufficient.  Perfectly healthy people have now become a danger to others.  So mask up, get your experimental shot, and shut up!

    Your body is no longer inviolable.  You must submit to medical procedures on your body whether you want them or not.  Do not object or question. If you do, you will be punished and will become a pariah.  The authorities will call you crazy, deviant, selfish. They will take away your rights to travel and engage in normal activities, such as attend college, etc.

    Please do not recall The Nuremberg Code.  Especially number 7: “Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability or death.” (my emphasis)

    “Now is the time to just do what you are told,” as Anthony Fauci so benevolently declared.

    I am not making a prediction.  The authorities have told us what’s coming. Pay attention.  Don’t be fooled.  It’s a game they have devised.  Keep people guessing.  On edge.  Relieved.  Tense.  Relaxed.  Shocked.  Confused.  That’s the game.  One day this, the next that.  You’re on, you’re off.  You’re in, you’re out.  We are allowing you this freedom, but be good children or we will have to retract it.  If you misbehave, you will get a time out.  Time to contemplate your sins.

    If you once thought that COVID-19 would be a thing of the past by now, or ever, think again.  On May 3, 2021 The New York Times reported that the virus is here to stay.  This was again reported on May 10.  Hopes Fade for Global Herd Immunity.  You may recall that we were told such immunity would be achieved once enough people got the “vaccine” or enough people contracted the virus and developed antibodies.

    On May 9, on ABC News, Dr. Fauci, when asked about indoor mask requirements being relaxed, said, “I think so, and I think you’re going to probably be seeing that as we go along, and as more people get vaccinated.”  Then he added: “We do need to start being more liberal, as we get more people vaccinated.”

    But then, in what CNN reported as a Mother’s Day prediction, he pushed the date for “normality” out another year, saying, “I hope that [by] next Mother’s Day, we’re going to see a dramatic difference than what we’re seeing right now. I believe that we will be about as close to back to normal as we can.  We’ve got to make sure that we get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated. When that happens, the virus doesn’t really have any place to go. You’re not going to see a surge. You’re not going to see the kinds of numbers we see now.”

    He said this with a straight face even though the experimental “vaccines,” by their makers own admissions, do not prevent the vaccinated from getting the virus or passing it on.  They allege it only mitigates the severity of the virus if you contract it.

    Notice the language and the vaccination meme repeated three times: “We get more people vaccinated.” (my emphasis) Not that more people choose to get vaccinated, but “we get” them vaccinated.  Thank you, Big Daddy. And now we have another year to go until “we will be about as close to back to normal as we can.”  Interesting phrase: as we can.  It other words: we will never return to normality but will have to settle for the new normal that will involve fewer freedoms.  Life will be reset, a great reset.  Great for the few and terrible for the many.

    Once two vaccines were enough; then, no, maybe one is sufficient; no, you will need annual or semi-annual booster shots to counteract the new strains that they say are coming.  It’s a never-ending story with never-ending new strains in a massive never-ending medical experiment.  The virus is changing so quickly and herd immunity is now a mystical idea, we are told, that it will never be achieved.  We will have to be eternally vigilant.

    But wait.  Don’t despair.  It looks like restrictions are easing up for the coming summer in the northern hemisphere. Lockdowns will be loosened.  If you felt like a prisoner for the past year plus, now you will be paroled for a while. But don’t dispose of those masks just yet.  Fauci says that wearing masks could become seasonal following the pandemic because people have become accustomed to wearing them and that’s why the flu has disappeared. The masks didn’t prevent COVID-19 but eliminated the flu.  Are you laughing yet?

    Censorship and lockdowns and masks and mandatory injections are like padded cells in a madhouse and hospital world where free-association doesn’t lead to repressed truths because free association isn’t allowed, neither in word nor deed.  Speaking freely and associating with others are too democratic. Yes, we thought we were free.  False consciousness is pandemic.  Exploitation is seen as benevolence. Silence reigns.  And the veiled glances signify the ongoing terror that has spread like a virus.

    We are now in a long war with two faces.  As with the one justified by the mass murders of September 11, 2001, this viral one isn’t going away.

    The question is: Do we have to wait twenty years to grasp the obvious and fight for our freedoms?

    We can be assured that Zelikow and his many associates at Covid Collaborative, including General Stanley McChrystal, Robert Gates, Arnie Duncan, Deval Patrick, Tom Ridge, et al. – a whole host of Republicans and Democrats backed by great wealth and institutional support, will not be “whacking moles” in their search for truth.  Their agenda is quite different.

    But then again, you may recall where they stood on the mass murders of September 11, 2001 and the endless wars that have followed.

    The post Second Stage Terror Wars first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Dasht-e-Barchi,Kabul

    The explosions rocked the west Kabul district of Dasht-e-Barchi as residents were out shopping ahead of next week’s Eid-ul-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

    The death toll from bombs planted outside a girls’ school in an area of the Afghan capital populated largely by the Shiite Hazara community has risen to 50, the interior ministry said Sunday.

    Ministry spokesman Tareq Arian told reporters a car bomb detonated in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada School on Saturday, and when the students rushed out in panic two more bombs exploded.

    He said more than 100 people were wounded, adding that most of the victims were female students. No group has so far claimed the attack, but Afghan officials including President Ashraf Ghani have blamed the Taliban.

    “The Taliban are behind this attack. They have carried out similar attacks on education institutions in the past,” said Arian.

    The insurgents have denied involvement. It comes as the United States military continues to pull out its last 2,500 troops from violence-wracked Afghanistan, despite faltering peace efforts between the Taliban and the Afghan government to end a decades-long war.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Web desk,

    Pakistan on Monday decided to temporarily ban the entry of people from Afghanistan and Iran to Pakistan via land routes, reported local news TV channel.

    The ban would be imposed for 16 days from tomorrow May 5 at 6pm to May 20 and no one passenger could be entered in Pakistani territories from Iran and Afghan borders.

    Therefore, Pakistani passenger could move from Pakistan to Afghanistan or Iran through the land routes as there would not be a ban on passengers traveling from Pakistan to Iran and Afghanistan.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Web desk,

    As the US military began formally withdrawing from Afghanistan Saturday, some residents in Kandahar the former bastion of the Taliban were optimistic the exit will bring peace to the violence-wracked country.

    “The fighting will then be between two Muslim brothers (Afghan government forces and the Taliban) and the hope is that the two will reconcile and make peace,” said Pacha Khan, a farmer from the southern Afghan province that was once a flashpoint of fighting.

    US President Joe Biden had announced in April that the remaining 2,500 American troops will formally begin leaving Afghanistan from May 1 and complete their withdrawal by the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, bringing an end to America’s longest war.

    In reality, the withdrawal has been a work in progress for months.

    Fighting between US forces and the Taliban has stopped since a landmark deal between Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump and the insurgents last year.

    But battles rage daily between Afghan government forces and the militants across Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban who ruled the country in the 1990s with a harsh version of Islamic sharia law.

    Few shops were open in Kandahar city’s main market on Saturday, while police set up checkpoints on roads leading to the airport almost deserted as most American troops have left.

    In Kandahar’s Bush Bazar named for former US president who started the war in 2001 shopkeepers sorted through used goods for sale from the former American base.

    “A few days ago there was a big blast outside the airport. We later came to know the Americans had destroyed equipment,” said Esa Mohammad, the bazar’s secretary.

    “Now we get scrap from there to be sold in the market.”

    Many ordinary Afghans remain bitter at US forces for the hardships over the years.

    Mohammad, a farmer who gave only one name, said the past 20 years had been worse than the 1980s, when Afghanistan was occupied by Soviet troops.

    “The Russians did not inflict the kind of casualties the Americans did,” said the father of eight.

    “The Americans killed my brother 10 years ago when they bombarded our village. These infidels have inflicted heavy losses and I’m happy they are leaving.”

    His views were echoed by Agha Shireen, a trishaw driver from Arghandab on the outskirts of Kandahar city.

    “They have killed a lot of our people and brought only misery,” he said.

    “If the Taliban return, the situation might turn better.”

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • War, repression, and imperialism characterize the objective plight of billions of humans still gripped by the vicious colonial-capitalist world system. May 1 is the day laboring classes claim for themselves as International Workers’ Day to reaffirm the struggle against the dehumanization and degradation of the global capitalist order kept in place by state violence and war. May 1 also is the deadline the United States agreed to last year to pull out of Afghanistan to end the suffering of that nation of workers and peasants. It also is the day the workers and poor of Haiti have chosen to revolt against the puppet government imposed on them by the Biden-Harris administration, a duo that has proven in its first 100 days its commitment to Black life does not extend beyond domestic public-relations stunts.

    The post Making International Workers’ Day A Day Of Action Against Imperialism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Normandy Freedom Prize invites young people aged 15 to 25 in France and around the world, to reward each year a person or an organization engaged in an exemplary fight in favour of freedom. The online vote open to 15-25 year olds around the world to elect the 2021 Freedom Prize closed on April 26. Sonita Alizadeh, 25 years old, rapper born in Afghanistan, was named the laureate of this third edition of the Freedom Prize thanks to the votes of more than 5,000 young people from all over the world. For more on this award and its laureates see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/fef9ddd0-5b73-11e9-aba0-2ddd74eff7fa

    Sonita Alizadeh is a rapper who was born in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. At the age of 9, her parents planned to sell her as a bride but because of the war, her family fled to Iran and the planned marriage fell through. In Teheran, an NGO provided her with access to education and a cleaning job. When Sonita stumbled upon a song by the rapper Eminem, it is a real breakthrough. She began writing to tell her story and to speak out against forced marriage and the plight of millions of children around the world. Her first single, “Brides for Sale” garnered worldwide attention. Having moved to the United States, she now studies law to become a lawyer and to return to her country to defend Afghan women and children.
     

    The reaction of Nadia Khiari alias Willis from Tunis, president of the international jury for the Freedom Prize 2021

    I am proud to accompany the youth jury for the Prix Liberté. It is essential to sensitize the young generation to the defense of freedoms whatever they may be and to involve them in the construction of equality and the rights of every woman and man in the world. This requires awareness and teaching of what is happening elsewhere but also in France. Young people need to be heard because they are just like adults, victims of suffering and indifference.”

    https://normandiepourlapaix.fr/en/actualites/sonita-alizadeh-laureate-2021-freedom-prize

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Censorship comes in many forms. One of [them] is a colossal moral indifference to official crimes at the highest levels of our government.

    — Ralph Nader, April 17, 2021, Ralph Nader Radio Hour

    Disclaimer: This is not a traditional mainstream or even left-stream book review. However, Steven C. Markoff’s book does play as the impetus and linchpin to my essay, more of an analysis/reaction to his book.  I give The Case Against George W. Bush, high marks. Read Steve’s book. Press your respective legislators to push for an investigation of W.’s crimes. Markoff sets out in the book about how those crimes were committed. I reference those. He completes his case: The evidence is there to prosecute and find guilty the 43rd President of the USA, George W. Bush.

    Nader’s Raiders of the Lost Warriors

    I was hitting the old Ralph Nader podcast a week ago when I stumbled upon Steven C. Markoff’s book, The Case Against George W. Bush. Nader had Markoff on his podcast, and both talked about the crimes of W Bush, and even more pertinently, the lack of a criminal case against George W. Bush, as well as the crickets in the so-called liberal media (SCLM) as well in the left press concerning Steve’s book.

    I quickly emailed Steve for a copy of his book to review, and he came back at me with a PDF of this book which, as I have stated, has been iced out of mainstream media: no interviews, no reviews let alone getting Steve into a room one-on-one, or onto a Zoom call with other guests to parse his well-researched, well-quoted book on the crimes of George W. Bush.

    The Case Against George W. Bush by Steven C. Markoff, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble®

    Of course, those crimes are more than crimes of omission, or crimes of secret rendition and torture sites, or the crimes of Abu Ghraib “prison” and Guantanamo. The crime was more than just all the lies about WMD’s and Saddam murdering babies. The big crime was Bush and his Regime of psychotic sociopaths of the neocon variety completely derailing valid, active and clear intelligence that Osama bin Laden was about to make a huge fiery asymmetrical splash on the world stage.

    Markoff lays out the daily briefs, the back and forth communiqués, the speeches Bush and others on his team made which all provides evidence of what “we” know about Osama bin Laden. The entire gambit goes back to the Soviet Union’s role in Afghanistan, then with Carter, Reagan, Bush Senior, Clinton and leading up to the ex-governor of Texas, W Bush.

    Carter Doctrine 25 years before 9/11

    Unfortunately, Jimmy Carter’s man  got the Soviet Union and then USA, all tangled up in Afghanistan.

    The best way for us to understand Afghanistan is to look at the record of American involvement going back four decades and to look at the record requires a reexamination of President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. From the start, U.S. policy formation surrounding Afghanistan has lived in a realm of magical thinking that has produced nothing but a catastrophe of nightmarish proportions. Brzezinski impacted the future of American foreign policy by monopolizing the Carter administration in ways that few outside the White House understand. In his role as national security advisor he put himself in a position to control information into and out of the White House and when it came to Afghanistan – to use it for whatever purposes he saw fit.

    “Brzezinski was an obsessive Russia-hater to the end. That led to the monumental failures of Carter’s term in office; the hatreds Brzezinski released had an impact which continues to be catastrophic for the rest of the world.” Helmer wrote in 2017, “To Brzezinski goes the credit for starting most of the ills – the organization, financing, and armament of the mujahedeen the Islamic fundamentalists who have metastasized – with US money and arms still – into Islamic terrorist armies operating far from Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Brzezinski started them off.”

    — ‘Magical Thinking’ has Always Guided the US Role in Afghanistan by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

    The Clinton “team” briefed the incoming George W. Bush “team” before his January 2001 inauguration about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. For the younger Bush, he repudiated the evidence trail from so many intelligence sources. His eyes were on Operation Iraqi Freedom, but first called, O.I.L,  which was propagated by Jay Leno incessantly after it was blurted out from the source:

    On the afternoon of March 24, 2003 days after the U.S launched missiles at Baghdad to start the illegal war, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer held a press briefing. After a few minutes, a couple of sentences into the briefing, he verbally stumbled on the name of Bush’s war, stating, “Operation Iraqi, uh, Liberation.”

    Calling it “Operation Iraqi Freedom” officially is just more War is Peace, Lies are Truth bullshit. And that 2001 invasion of Afghanistan ― “Operation Enduring Freedom” – is yet more of the PT Barnum spin, all catalogued in the annals of United States Central Command and U.S. Army War College.

    Trail of Tears, Trails of Evidence

    Markoff’s book is a straightforward record of myriad published records – taped speeches, newspaper articles/Op-Eds, sections from books, redacted memos and top secret records. As a buttress to the asymmetrical history of what happened leading up to and during the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequently all that went wrong in the Middle East, this upcoming 20th anniversary of 9/11, Markoff’s book should be required reading.

    But reading isn’t enough for just consuming Markoff’s book, and reading it is not enough for those of us who have been fighting the wars, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as all the others. What we need is a truth and reconciliation hearing for all those murdered in the September 11 attacks (around 3,000) as well as the countless hundreds of thousands (several million some estimates determine up to today) killed when the USA bombed and razed Iraq.

    The deep links between terror attacks and Southwest Florida - News - Sarasota Herald-Tribune - Sarasota, FL

    Remember that famous photo of Bush reading about a goat to kids in Florida:

    On the morning of September 11, 2001, Bush was at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County, Florida, reading “My Pet Goat.”

    Oh, his dedication to inner-city first graders and listening to them recite the goat story is golden. Earlier, Bush had been on the way from his hotel to the school in his motorcade when it was reported to him a passenger jet had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. Old commander in Chief Bush believed the crash was an accident caused, perhaps, by pilot error.

    That old goat, man, what a story, so much so that when Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, entered the classroom at 9:06 to tell this president a second airplane had struck the South Tower and that the nation was under attack, Bush stayed on his duff for seven more minutes, following along as the children finished reading the book.

    “Class Goat”

    Goat may be an old West Point term for the man/woman graduating last in his/her class, but one infamous George the Goat from the Army Academy is none other than George Armstrong Custer.

    Unfortunately, the proverbial goat in America’s eyes is the million people murdered and millions more suffering because of the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. Steve’s book lays out the three legal frameworks or cases for prosecuting Bush (and solely Bush, not Bush and Company LLC) for crimes against humanity (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and Bush’s own responsibility for those several thousand who died on that fateful day, September 11, 2001.

    Mathematician Finally Solves Goat Problem: Here's the Answer

    Here’s part of a blurb on the book’s web site, Rare Bird Lit:

    Steven C. Markoff presents sourced evidence of three crimes committed by George W. Bush during his presidency: his failure to take warnings of coming terror attacks on our country seriously; taking the United States, by deception, into an unnecessary and disastrous 2003 war with Iraq; costing the lives of more than 4,000 Americans and 500,000 others; and breaking domestic and international laws by approving the torture as means to extract information. While Markoff lays out his case of the crimes, he leaves it up to the reader to decide the probable guilt of George W. Bush and his actions regarding the alleged crimes.

    Casualties of War — Truth, Honor, Duty to Protect 

    I had cut my teeth as a reporter in El Paso and elsewhere covering and following that other container ship of lies – Reagan’s crew of felons and thugs who philandered the American public with their special form of Murder Incorporated in Central America, and notably, Nicaragua. Or the illegal invasion of Panama under George H. W. Bush. Oh, those invasions, coups, clandestine bombings, proxy wars, incursions, secret operations, PsyOps.

    I even ended up “down south,” in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Nicaragua running into all sorts of odd fellows in the “drugs for guns” continuing criminal enterprise involving some of this country’s more nefarious “diplomats” and “generals” and CIA/NSA scum. Oh, those yellow belly Contras, murdering civilians and bombing schools and clinics for Reagan and Company. Those freedom fighters, AKA, the biggest lying cheats in recent times in Central America, Los Contras.

    And the dead horse isn’t dead, and another author, like Markoff, just couldn’t buy the bs on those Contras:

    Thus, in his 2012 book, The Manufacturing of a President, Wayne Madsen claims, based upon his numerous intelligence sources, that the CIA and Mossad have both been funding these rearmed Contras, and that they have been shipping these Contras arms over both the Honduran and Costa Rican borders.  He claims also that the Honduran government which came to power through the 2009 coup – a coup which the Obama Administration actively aided and abetted to unseat a leftist government which, by the way, happened to be friendly to Daniel Ortega – has been key to helping both support the Contras as well as to provide a staging ground for the covert operations to bring down the Sandinista government.  In other words, Honduras is playing the very same role it did in the 1980s, and the US-backed coup in 2009 – a mere 2 years after Ortega was elected – was crucial to this role.

    Dan Kovalik

    Of course, the Bush Family Legacy was also all written over that fiasco, and again, it was easy for me to continue my penchant for understanding how rotten the United States is as I am the son of a Vietnam War regular army veteran, who put in 31 years in uniform.

    Lords of War, the Racket that is General Smedley Butler’s war warnings. Or Gary Webb, killing the messenger, the same CIA-infused Washington Post, New York Times and LA Times, to just name a few of the publications that corrupted the real work of Webb uncovering that entire drugs for guns Mafiosi.

    Robert Parry, deceased now, but a journalist who started Consortium News in 1994, with Webb as one of his big stories on how bad the US government is, and how bad the mainstream media has become.

    Here, Parry:

    So what I was seeking by the mid-1990s was some solid ground in which to plant a flag for honest journalism, rather than constantly being forced into retreat, pulled by nervous editors and producers looking over their shoulders out of fear of right-wing retaliation. From solid ground, I thought, we could produce journalism that simply assessed the facts and made independent judgments regardless of who might be offended.

    In 1995, it was my oldest son, Sam, who suggested the then-novel idea of “a Web site.” I didn’t fully understand what a Web site was and Sam was no techie but he demonstrated extraordinary patience in building our original Internet presence. (Back then, there were no templates; you had to start from scratch.) We married old-fashioned investigative reporting with the new technology of the Internet and began publishing groundbreaking investigative articles.

    We followed evidence where it went, even when it flew in the face of the conventional wisdom, such as our work on the 1980 October Surprise issue of whether Reagan and Bush went behind President Jimmy Carter’s back during his Iran-hostage negotiations, much the way Nixon had in sabotaging Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks in 1968.

    Not only did we present our own original work but we buttressed investigations by other serious journalists, such as Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News when, in 1996, he revived Ronald Reagan’s Contra-cocaine scandal. When the major newspapers set out to destroy Webb and discredit his revelations, Consortiumnews was one outlet that took on the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

    Yes, we were outgunned. Despite showing that Webb was not only right but actually understated the problem of Contra-cocaine trafficking, we still could not save Webb from having his career destroyed and then watching the big newspapers essentially high-five each other for having helped cover up a serious crime of state.

    The Three Crimes of the POTUS #43 (Secret Service called him Trailblazer)

    I am not going astray here, kind reader. What Steven talked a lot about on the Ralph Nader podcast was how that same media, the So-called Liberal Press, has virtually gone silent on his book, a type of passive censorship that can eat at the soul of any author.

    In reality, the “case against Bush” is the case against mainstream media/press and their close ties to not just the chambers of power, but within their “embeddedness,” inside the ranks, as well as their allegiance to, and participation in, the national security state’s various bureaus of hit men and hit women.

    When I finished the book, I offered the book to everybody that I had quoted, which was… around ninety authors. I offered it to Condoleezza Rice, I offered it to Dick Cheney, I offered it to the [George W.] Bush [Presidential] Library. I haven’t heard from one person about the book.

    — Steven Markoff stated on Nader’s show.

    Interestingly, Markoff incorporates Richard Clarke’s words as a preface to this book. Clarke actually strips culpability from Rumsfeld, Cheney, and others laying the blame on Bush personally. Here, early in Markoff’s book, Clarke puts it clearly in his mind.

    While I may be considered by some to be prejudiced in my judgment, there are facts that any objective observer must accept.

    • First, Bush ignored warnings about the serious threat from Al Qaeda prior to 9/11.
    • Second, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in violation of international law, when Iraq had been uninvolved in 9/11 and offered no imminent threat to the United States.
    • Third, Bush authorized the use of torture and denied prisoners due process, both acts in violation of international law.

    Note that in each case I say that Bush did these things, not the Bush administration. There is a revisionist school that seeks to place the blame on Bush’s vice president, Richard B. Cheney. While there can be little doubt that Cheney encouraged Bush to take many of these actions, it is not true that the president was merely a tool of a mendacious and scheming subordinate.

    The evidence is now clear that Bush agreed with his vice president and knew full well what he was doing. He was an enthusiastic participant, a believer in the war on terror and the war on Iraq. It is true, however, that he did not master or manage the details of either war until the last few years of his eight-year presidency.

    — Richard A. Clarke, in the Forward of Markoff’s book.

    [In 1992, President George H. W. Bush appointed Richard A. Clarke to chair the Counterterrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council. President Bill Clinton retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism. Under President George W. Bush, Clarke initially continued in the same position and later became the special advisor to the president on cyber security. He left his government position prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.]

    Markoff uses Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, as a touchstone of sorts. That was in 2007.

    Importantly, Clarke had the necessary government background, involvement, and position to know about what he wrote. When I finished Clarke’s book, I was shocked. Could Bush have really disregarded threats of bin Laden and Al-Qaeda prior to 9/11? If so, was there a compelling reason that Bush spent his political capital and energy going after Hussein? Could it be that George W. Bush’s Iraq War was about oil?

    It occurred to me that while Clarke seemed knowledgeable about terrorists, 9/11, and the run up to our 2003 invasion of Iraq, he was just one person, and his knowledge was limited to what he had personally seen and learned.

    I thought that if I combined details from Clarke’s book with related information from other diverse sources with inside or special knowledge of those times and places, that combined information could produce new and clearer insights about 9/11 and the Iraq War. I then set out to find what additional facts and information were available on those and related topics.

    — Steven Markoff, The Case Against George W. Bush

    Torture, Rendition, Yellow Cake, WMD’s

    I remember protesting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales June 27, 2007, in Spokane, when he showed up to talk about his department under Bush. Many of us were there to protest publicly Gonzales and the Bush administration, for many things, including that 2002 memo written by Gonzales that said Bush had the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties that protect prisoners of war.

    Oh, the long arm of the “law” that Wednesday afternoon took a good friend down to the ground, arborist Dan Treecraft. He did nothing wrong, but Dan along with another person, was arrested for public disturbance.

    I was there with students of mine from two community colleges where I taught, and alas, even those two respective presidents and chairs of the department where I taught thought they had the right to tell a faculty member what he could and couldn’t do as part of a class assignment on “what it’s like to come out and protest a representative of your/our government who states torture is okay.”

    Ironically, he was in Spokane to talk about “gang enforcement,” and Gonzales  wasn’t alluding to the biggest continuing criminal enterprise Gang called the United States of America.

    Steve’s book is a guide, a probable pathway for lawmakers, voters, and others, including the Press, to ratchet up the attention on George W. Bush the War Criminal, and to put to rest the fawning and ameliorating reputation of Bush as The Painter (sic) Friend of Michelle Obama and Ellen.

    The kicker in Markoff’s book, says it all, quite damningly, but the reality is that the War is a Racket machine is a very fine tuned complex – Big Business Complex: Burger King, et al; Home Depot, et al; Mercenaries ‘R Us, et al; paint, air conditioning, roads, drywall, vehicles, depleted uranium, fuel, water, food suppliers, et al; all those financial products, that medical complex et al; Big Ag, Big Oil, Big Chemical, Big Prison et al, all in the manner of the for-profit system that is subsidized – welfare-ized – by the US taxpayer. Insanity we have already seen in other wars, and that War on Vietnam, not enough lessons learned there? I’ve been up close and personal with that war, in Vietnam as a civilian, and as a son of a wounded regular Army officer, social worker for wounded veterans, homeless vets and their families, instructor of college writing for Vietnam veterans.

    There is no urban legend attributed to those $200 hammers and $600 toilet seats and $2000 each bolts holding the shrouding of Patriot missiles. War is graft central, and how many millionaires and billionaires were created after World War I? Read General Butler’s, War is a Racket.

    Evidence of Crimes as Eight Bullet Points

    This shit is personal to me, as well, since I have had friends and students coming back from Bush’s wars, full of trauma, fucked up beyond repair, walking PTSD warriors with all that resentment, anger and physical outbursts, and nowhere to go. Here is Steve’s book, again, near the end:

    Could the following quote from Payback, a book by David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton, in part on the strategy of redirected aggression, explain Bush’s taking our country to war on his misleading and false premises?

    “George W. Bush and his Administration were not stooges at all, but quite brilliant. They read the need of most Americans at the time: to hit someone, hard, so as to redirect their suffering and anger [from 9/11]. The evidence is overwhelming that for the Bush Administration’s ‘neocons,’ the September 11 attacks were not the reason for the Iraq War; rather, it was a convenient excuse for doing something upon which they had already decided. Their accomplishment—if such is the correct word—was identifying the post-9/11 mood of the American people, and manipulating this mood, brilliantly, toward war.”

    It’s difficult to fathom the extent of the death and destruction caused by George W. Bush’s three crimes, but his legacy of death and destruction are of Olympic proportions.

    •  An estimated 2,977 people killed by the attacks on 9/11, and thousands more injured or incapacitated that day. In addition, hundreds if not thousands have died and will die early from the toxic air from the collapse of the Twin Towers and its aftermath.
    • By one count, there were 4,400 United States personnel killed and 30,000 wounded in the Iraq War as of August 31, 2010; tens of thousands more wounded physically and emotionally crippled by participating in that war; millions of Americans and their families destroyed, devastated, and/or traumatized by 9/11 and Bush’s 2003 Iraq War.
    •  As many as 650,000 deaths or more from Bush’s Iraq War, deaths that wouldn’t have occurred but for that war.
    •  Many of our civil rights, and the civil rights of others around the world, were curtailed due to the fear created by 9/11, a fear used by some as an opportunity to weaken our liberties.
    •  Three to seven trillion dollars in costs to our country from 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Those unnecessary trillions were and will be added to our national debt, a sum burdening our future, the future of our children, and perhaps of generations to come.
    •  Bush’s torture of prisoners puts American soldiers captured in future wars at greater risk of being tortured.
    •  The loss of America’s prestige and moral authority from Bush’s unnecessary Iraq War and torturing prisoners will hurt our country in the years ahead.
    •  Sixteen different US spy agencies on September 24, 2006, concluded that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq since March 2003 has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicals— effectively increasing the terror threat in the years after 9/11—and that the Bush administration tortured detainees and that torture wasn’t effective in securing intel otherwise unavailable.

    Because America invaded a sovereign country without credible reason and tortured prisoners, how can we say without hypocrisy that other countries shouldn’t do the same to other nations or to us? What moral authority do we have to tell others it is wrong to torture?

    — Steven Markoff, The Case Against George W. Bush

    Pretty damning, and as I file this review/analysis/rant, that W is at it again, and his stupidity is the stunt, no, smart as a fox, or pet-painting war criminal?

    George W Bush shakes hands with Condoleezza Rice in Washington DC on 5 January 2006.

    In a People interview, the former president said he told his former secretary of state he had written for her. “She knows it,” said Bush, 74, “But she told me she would refuse to accept the office.”

    Bush has been doing press to support the release of his book, Out of Many, One, which features his painted portraits of American immigrants and the stories of their lives.

    He called current-day Republicans “isolationist, protectionist, and, to a certain extent, nativist.”

    “Really what I should have said — there’s loud voices who are isolationists, protectionists and nativists, something, by the way, I talked about when I was president,” Bush said. “My concerns [are] about those -isms, but I painted with too broad a brush … because by saying what I said, it excluded a lot of Republicans who believe we can fix the problem.”

    Shadow of War — Ghosts of the Dead

    We’ll see if People magazine interviews Markoff, and gets a bit under the skin of his fine book, all 360 pages, with a decent bibliography and works cited section.

    His conclusion:

    Regardless of how I or others see what I submit are Bush’s criminal acts, some will continue to argue that while he wasn’t a perfect president, at least he rid the world of the tyrant, Hussein. Yes, he did, but for what reason, by what method, and at what cost?

    In addition to the unnecessary deaths and wounding of thousands of brave Americans, hundreds of thousands of others died and were injured from Bush’s unnecessary Iraq invasion. The trillions of dollars Bush’s war has cost has and will continue to be added to our national debt. A debt saddling our future.

    In conclusion, I believe the evidence in this book shows Bush’s three crimes were reckless, dishonest, and tragically unnecessary.

    I rest my case.

    — Steven Markoff, The Case Against George W. Bush

    Of course, there are gross inaccuracies when it comes to US-induced casualties, and the first casualty of war is truth, for sure:

    Of the countries where the U.S. and its allies have been waging war since 2001, Iraq is the only one where epidemiologists have actually conducted comprehensive mortality studies based on the best practices that they have developed in war zones such as Angola, Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda. In all these countries, as in Iraq, the results of comprehensive epidemiological studies revealed 5 to 20 times more deaths than previously published figures based on “passive” reporting by journalists, NGOs or governments.

    Taking ORB’s estimate of 1.033 million killed by June 2007, then applying a variation of Just Foreign Policy’s methodology from July 2007 to the present using revised figures from Iraq Body Count, we estimate that 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 as a result of our country’s illegal invasion, with a minimum of 1.5 million and a maximum of 3.4 million.

    Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, March 19, 2018

    main article image

    [Civil protection rescue teams work on the debris of a destroyed house to recover the body of people killed in an airstrike during fighting between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants on the western side of Mosul, Iraq. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File)]

    For Markoff, it’s the lives that were destroyed by Bush. That is the echo in his words, and the ghosts of those murdered are the shadows between the lines in The Case Against George W. Bush. 

    Roots of Zionism and U.S. Liberty to Iraq and Now Iran

    Alas, I am ending this analysis/response to Markoff’s book, The Case Against George W. Bush, by slogging through another quagmire, and then some reference to books on just who was lobbying to attack Iraq. We have Markoff trying to open up a case against W. Bush, and his book is clear, focused, not one we’d expect in the pantheon of history books or investigative research/journalistic screeds.

    Some writers, thinkers, educators and journalists (such as myself), however, were already looking into the scope of this terror campaign, the implications of US Patriot Act, the entire mess that is Israel’s murderous mucking about in the Middle East with Israel-Firster American corporate heads, administration wonks, politicians and more clandestine and nefarious actors behind the scenes, supreme puppet masters and Svengali types.

    All those Israeli wars led to the destruction of Lebanon, Syria and the biggest obstacle at the time, Iraq.

    And, here I go again, tangentially putting more fuel into the fires that immolated Iraq and which have blazed through the Middle East before and during and since W. Bush and his Klan invaded the Middle East.

    Here, I reference a recent piece by Timothy Alexander Guzman who briefly alludes to the AIPAC/Israel/Israel-firster connection to the invasion(s) of Iraq in his piece, “The Prospect of a Major False-Flag Operation in the Middle-East Grows by the Day: Remembering June 8th, 1967 the Day Israel Attacked the USS Liberty: “It’s was all part of the long-term plan and Iraq was part of that plan, in fact, the most powerful lobby in Washington is AIPAC and the Bush neoconservatives including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, Elliot Abrams and others who pushed Washington into a war with Iraq. According to John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)  was a major supporter for the War on Iraq”:

    AIPAC usually supports what Israel wants, and Israel certainly wanted the United States to invade Iraq. Nathan Guttman made this very connection in his reporting [in Haaretz, April 2003] on AIPAC’s annual conference in the spring of 2003, shortly after the war started: “AIPAC is wont to support whatever is good for Israel, and so long as Israel supports the war, so too do the thousands of the AIPAC lobbyists who convened in the American capital.” AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr’s statement to the New York Sun in January 2003 is even more revealing, as he acknowledged “‘quietly’ lobbying Congress to approve the use of force in Iraq” was one of “AIPAC’s successes over the past year.” And in a lengthy New Yorker profile of Steven J. Rosen, who was AIPAC’s policy director during the run-up to the Iraq war, Jeffrey Goldberg reported that “AIPAC lobbied Congress in favor of the Iraq war.”

    — John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

     

    Liberty Survivors Say US Still Downplays Israel's Attack on Ship | Military.com

    [Oh, that anniversary, of the attack by Israel on the Liberty, June 8th (1967)]

    I suppose this entire mess that Markoff catalogues in his book, as a triumvirate of crimes by George W. Bush, could for me, personally, be summed up, in my mind, with President George W. Bush, speaking at the annual AIPAC conference in May of 2004:

    You’ve always understood and warned against the evil ambition of terrorism and their networks. In a dangerous new century, your work is more vital than ever.

    Steven Markoff doesn’t go there, for sure, and that is what makes Markoff’s book unique, too:  a clean record of the mess and blunder and murderous trail George W. Bush left in his wake as leader of the so-called “free world.”

    The post W’s Chickens Coming Home to Roost, yet the Media Cocks Aren’t Crowing first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Exclusive: Torture survivors and lone children stuck in Greece and Italy after Home Office ‘deliberately’ ends cooperation on family reunions

    The Home Office has been accused of failing to reunite vulnerable refugees who have the right to join family in the UK under EU law, leaving lone children and torture survivors stranded.

    The government faced widespread criticism when it announced that family reunion law would no longer apply after the UK left the EU, and it promised that cases under way on that date would be allowed to proceed.

    Related: Outrage at U-turn on promise to reunite child refugees with UK family

    Related: ‘I was alone, I had nothing’: from child refugee to student nurse in Athens

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Audio recording of this article:

    Former National Security Advisor and literal psychopath John Bolton has a new opinion piece out in Foreign Policy titled “‘Bring the Troops Home’ Is a Dream, Not a Strategy“, which should surprise no one and enrage everyone at the same time. The fact that this reptile continues to be elevated on mainstream platforms after consistently revealing himself to be a bloodthirsty liar is all the evidence you need that we are trapped inside a globe-spanning empire fueled by human corpses.

    John Bolton has pushed for deranged acts of mass military slaughter at every opportunity. He not only remains one of the only people in the world to continually insist that the Iraq invasion was a great idea, but has actually argued that the destabilization and chaos caused by the invasion cannot be attributed to Bush’s war because you can’t prove that “everything that followed from the fall of Saddam Hussein followed inevitably, solely, and unalterably from the decision to overthrow him.” There are harrowing accounts of Bolton threatening, assaulting and intimidating anyone with less power than him if they got in his way; he once threatened to harm the children of former OPCW Director General Jose Bustani because Bustani was interfering in attempts to manufacture consent for the Iraq war.

    In an even remotely sane civilization, such a creature would be driven from every town he entered until he is forced to crawl into a cave for the rest of his miserable life eating bats alone in the darkness. Instead he is given the mainstream spotlight whenever he wishes while truthful and intelligent anti-imperialists are relegated to fringe blogs and podcasts. This would not be the case if we did not live in an empire that is held together by war and war propaganda.

    And now look at me, off on a tangent before my article has even begun.

    Anyway, in his Foreign Policy article Bolton argues that withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan would be a mistake, because it would lead to the nation being overrun by ISIS and al Qaeda.

    “If the Taliban return to power in all or most of the country, the almost universal view in Washington today is the near certainty that al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and others will resume using Afghanistan as a base of operations,” Bolton writes.

    These are very strange words to have to type, but, John Bolton is right. There is a consensus within the hub of the US empire that that is what will happen. You can tell because that’s what the empire’s media have been blaring all year.

    In a March article from Vox titled “The best case against withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan“, a senior fellow from the military industrial complex-funded think tank Center for a New American Security named Lisa Curtis explains that withdrawing troops can lead to a disastrous terrorist insurgency that will only result in having to send them back again.

    “Let’s look at Iraq,” says Curtis. “When the US withdrew troops, ISIS rose and took over Mosul in 2014. We had to put troops back into Iraq and in even greater numbers, and we had to redouble our efforts to stem the rise of ISIS.”

    Bloomberg article from this month titled “Biden’s Afghan Pullout Is Risky Politics and Geopolitics” conveys the same message:

    “And once the U.S. is out of Afghanistan, on grounds that it needs to focus on other priorities, it will inevitably become harder to summon the top-level attention and political will needed to stay on top of emerging threats. This is what happened in Iraq in 2013-2014: Midlevel officials were warning, publicly, that ISIS was on the march, but only after a third of the country had fallen did the issue reach the top of the Barack Obama administration’s agenda.”

    A Financial Times article a few days back titled “Biden’s risky Afghanistan withdrawal” says the same:

    “Biden himself is well aware of the risks. It was he, in 2011, who took charge of America’s final pullout from Iraq. Within two years US forces were sucked back into the region by the rapid spread of Isis across Iraq and Syria. Then, as now, the temptation to proclaim an end to America’s ‘forever wars’ trumped the benefits of retaining a US footprint to insure against new deterioration.”

    We hear this same narrative over and over and over again whenever there’s talk about withdrawing US troops from a region, whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria: this is going to be Obama’s disastrous Iraq withdrawal all over again. Obama withdrew the troops in the early part of his term, but by 2014 Iraq had become so overrun by Islamic State that they needed to return to fight them off.

    This is because it has been Beltway Church doctrine ever since the rise of ISIS that Obama was wrong to withdraw troops from Iraq, and it is Beltway Church doctrine because there was a frenetic push to indoctrinate that narrative into Washington policymakers from day one.

    As soon as it became feasible we had malignant warmongers like Dick Cheney penning op-eds about how bad and wrong the troop withdrawal was, effectively screaming “SEE??? It’s ALWAYS wrong to end wars!” to ensure that a reduced global military presence never becomes the new normal for the US empire. From that day onwards Obama’s Iraq withdrawal has been used to hammer home this narrative that withdrawing troops from anywhere is “risky” and irresponsible. There was a manic, almost orgasmic delight among warmongers at the fact that at last, at long long last, they finally had some evidence that scaling back military expansionism is bad.

    The problem? It’s bullshit.

    It’s bullshit for a couple of reasons, firstly because the US is not withdrawing from Afghanistan; it’s just privatizing the occupation. Mercenaries, special forces, CIA operatives and airstrikes will remain. And that’s assuming there’s even a troop withdrawal at all; as we sit here the US is actually beefing up its military presence in anticipation of Taliban retaliations for remaining in Afghanistan beyond the agreed-upon May 1 deadline, the logic I suppose being something like “We need to add forces to Afghanistan before we leave Afghanistan because we have to kill all the people in Afghanistan who want us to leave Afghanistan before we leave.” In any case the warmongers aren’t actually worried they’ll lose control of Afghanistan, they’re just worried about people becoming too peace-happy; they threw all these melodramatic fits when Trump sought withdrawals that never happened as well.

    Secondly, it’s bullshit because the warmongers are lying about why the US re-entered Iraq in 2014.

    The US didn’t re-enter Iraq in 2014 to stop ISIS, the US re-entered Iraq in 2014 to stop Qasem Soleimani from stopping ISIS.

    This is not a secret. In 2014 the commander of Iran’s Quds Force was already helping to beat back Islamic State in Iraq, and Iraqi officials reminded the world after his assassination last year at the hands of the Trump administration that Soleimani had played a key role in early victories in that fight. Iraq’s Sunni leaders had already been openly saying that they would turn to Iran for help if the US didn’t take the lead in defeating ISIS, and Iran was already demonstrating a willingness to put Soleimani’s notoriously effective fighting forces to work on that endeavor.

    If the United States had been a normal country, and not the hub of a globe-spanning empire bent on indefinite global domination, the obvious choice in that moment would have been to let the people in that part of the world sort out their own affairs in whatever way seems best to them. Because the United States is the hub of an empire that cannot tolerate the idea of another power being dominant in an oil-rich region it seeks to control for geostrategic reasons, allowing Iran and Iraq to become allied that closely was unthinkable.

    So, as usual, the narrative that westerners were fed about US troops being in the Middle East to “fight terrorists” was a lie. It was about geostrategic control of the world and its resources, just like it always is.

    The so-called “war on terror” has never been about defeating violent extremist factions, it’s been about keeping the nations in the region from relying on Iran and its allies to defeat them, and about justifying endless military expansionism in a key geostrategic part of the world. It’s been about ensuring the US power alliance is the dominant military force in the Middle East, not Iran and other unabsorbed powers like Russia and China.

    Qasem Soleimani was the best argument against the “war on terror”, and was the leader best suited for bringing the region out of danger from violent extremist factions like ISIS and al Qaeda.

    That’s why he is dead now.

    The world does not need the US empire to police it. People can sort out their own problems around the world if they were only allowed to. Iraq and its neighbors can sort out their own problems, as can Afghanistan and its neighbors. The only violence at risk of coming toward America and its easily-defended borders is the direct result of the US empire’s relentless aggression and belligerence that has killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century. There is no reason we can’t all just let each other be, collaborating and trading in peace without all these invasions, occupations and toppling of sovereign governments.

    The empire’s need to control the world’s affairs is like a macrocosm of the human ego, which also exists out of a fear that something bad will happen if I can’t remain in control of it all. But the world is forever out of control, and attempts to reign it in can only lead to disorder and suffering. Our species will not survive if we cannot collectively learn to relinquish the impulse to control, both within and without, and let life dance to its own beat on this beautiful blue world.

    _____________________

    I’m celebrating the hardback release of Woke: A Field Guide For Utopia Preppers by making a pay-as-you-feel PDF available.

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    Feature image via Wikimedia Commons.

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Biden with NATO’s Stoltenberg (Photo credit: haramjedder.blogspot.com)

    President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war.

    Biden’s failure to quickly recommit to the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, as Senator Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, provided a critical delay that has been used by opponents to undermine the difficult shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna to restore the agreement.

    The attempts to derail talks range from the introduction of the Maximum Pressure Act on April 21 to codify the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran to Israel’s cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Biden’s procrastination has only strengthened the influence of the hawkish Washington foreign policy “blob,” Republicans and Democratic hawks in Congress and foreign allies like Netanyahu in Israel.

    In Afghanistan, Biden has won praise for his decision to withdraw U.S. troops by September 11, but his refusal to abide by the May 1 deadline for withdrawal as negotiated under the Trump administration has led the Taliban to back out of the planned UN-led peace conference in Istanbul. A member of the Taliban military commission told the Daily Beast that “the U.S. has shattered the Taliban’s trust.”

    Now active and retired Pentagon officials are regaling the New York Times with accounts of how they plan to prolong the U.S. war without “boots on the ground” after September, undoubtedly further infuriating the Taliban and making a ceasefire and peace talks all the more difficult.

    In Ukraine, the government has launched a new offensive in its civil war against the ethnically Russian provinces in the eastern Donbass region, which declared unilateral independence after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014. On April 1, Ukraine’s military chief of staff said publicly that “the participation of NATO allies is envisaged” in the government offensive, prompting warnings from Moscow that Russia could intervene to protect Russians in Donbass.

    Sticking to their usual tired script, U.S. and NATO officials are pretending that Russia is the aggressor for conducting military exercises and troop movements within its own borders in response to Kiev’s escalation. But even the BBC is challenging this false narrative, explaining that Russia is acting competently and effectively to deter an escalation of the Ukrainian offensive and U.S. and NATO threats. The U.S has turned around two U.S. guided-missile destroyers that were steaming toward the Black Sea, where they would only have been sitting ducks for Russia’s advanced missile defenses.

    Tensions have escalated with China, as the U.S. Navy and Marines stalk Chinese ships in the South China Sea, well inside the island chains China uses for self defense. The Pentagon is hoping to drag NATO allies into participating in these operations, and the U.S. Air Force plans to shift more bombers to new bases in Asia and the Pacific, supported by existing larger bases in Guam, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

    Meanwhile, despite a promising initial pause and policy review, Biden has decided to keep selling tens of billion dollars worth of weapons to authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Persian Gulf sheikdoms, even as they keep bombing and blockading famine-stricken Yemen. Biden’s unconditional support for the most brutal authoritarian dictators on Earth lays bare the bankruptcy of the Democrats’ attempts to frame America’s regurgitated Cold War on Russia and China as a struggle between “democracy” and “authoritarianism.”

    In all these international crises (along with Cuba, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, Palestine, Syria and Venezuela, which are bedevilled by the same U.S. unilateralism), President Biden and the hawks egging him on are pursuing unilateral policies that ignore solemn commitments in international agreements and treaties, riding roughshod over the good faith of America’s allies and negotiating partners.

    As the Russian foreign ministry bluntly put it when it announced its countermeasures to the latest round of U.S. sanctions, “Washington is unwilling to accept that there is no room for unilateral dictates in the new geopolitical reality.”

    Chinese President Xi Jinping echoed the same multipolar perspective on April 20th at the annual Boao Asian international business forum. “The destiny and future of the world should be decided by all nations, and rules set up just by one or several countries should not be imposed on others,” Xi said. “The whole world should not be led by unilateralism of individual countries.”

    The near-universal failure of Biden’s diplomacy in his first months in office reflects how badly he and those who have his ear are failing to accurately read the limits of American power and predict the consequences of his unilateral decisions.

    Unilateral, irresponsible decision-making has been endemic in U.S. foreign policy for decades, but America’s economic and military dominance created an international environment that was extraordinarily forgiving of American “mistakes,” even as they ruined the lives of millions of people in the countries directly affected. Now America no longer dominates the world, and it is critical for U.S. officials to more accurately assess the relative power and positions of the United States and the countries and people it is confronting or negotiating with.

    Under Trump, Defense Secretary Mattis launched negotiations to persuade Vietnam to host U.S. missiles aimed at China. The negotiations went on for three years, but they were based entirely on wishful thinking and misreadings of Vietnam’s responses by U.S. officials and Rand Corp contractors. Experts agree that Vietnam would never violate a formal, declared policy of neutrality it has held and repeatedly reiterated since 1998.

    As Gareth Porter summarized this silly saga:

    The story of the Pentagon’s pursuit of Vietnam as a potential military partner against China reveals an extraordinary degree of self-deception surrounding the entire endeavor. And it adds further detail to the already well-established picture of a muddled and desperate bureaucracy seizing on any vehicle possible to enable it to claim that U.S. power in the Pacific can still prevail in a war with China.

    Unlike Trump, Biden has been at the heart of American politics and foreign policy since the 1970s. So the degree to which he too is out of touch with today’s international reality is a measure of how much and how quickly that reality has changed and continues to change. But the habits of empire die hard. The tragic irony of Biden’s ascent to power in 2020 is that his lifetime of service to a triumphalist American empire has left him ill-equipped to craft a more constructive and cooperative brand of American diplomacy for today’s multipolar world

    Amid the American triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War, the neocons developed a simplistic ideology to persuade America’s leaders that they need no longer be constrained in their use of military power by domestic opposition, peer competitors or international law. They claimed that America had virtually unlimited military freedom of action and a responsibility to use it aggressively, because, as Biden parroted them recently, “the world doesn’t organize itself.”

    The international violence and chaos Biden has inherited in 2021 is a measure of the failure of the neocons’ ambitions. But there is one place that they conquered, occupied and still rule to this day, and that is Washington D.C.

    The dangerous disconnect at the heart of Biden’s foreign policy is the result of this dichotomy between the neocons’ conquest of Washington and their abject failure to conquer the rest of the world.

    For most of Biden’s career, the politically safe path on foreign policy for corporate Democrats has been to talk a good game about human rights and diplomacy, but not to deviate too far from hawkish, neoconservative policies on war, military spending, and support for often repressive and corrupt allies throughout America’s neocolonial empire.

    The tragedy of such compromises by Democratic Party leaders is that they perpetuate the suffering of millions of people affected by the real-world problems they fail to fix. But the Democrats’ subservience to simplistic neoconservative ideas also fails to satisfy the hawks they are trying to appease, who only smell more political blood in the water at every display of moral weakness by the Democrats.

    In his first three months in office, Biden’s weakness in resisting the bullying of hawks and neocons has led him to betray the most significant diplomatic achievements of each of his predecessors, Obama and Trump, in the JCPOA with Iran and the May 1 withdrawal agreement with the Taliban respectively, while perpetuating the violence and chaos the neocons unleashed on the world.

    For a president who promised a new era of American diplomacy, this has been a dreadful start. We hope he and his advisers are not too blinded by anachronistic imperial thinking or too intimidated by the neocons to make a fresh start and engage with the world as it actually exists in 2021.

    The post Biden’s Appeasement of Hawks and Neocons is Crippling His Diplomacy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies / April 22nd, 2021

    Biden with NATO’s Stoltenberg (Photo credit: haramjedder.blogspot.com)

    President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war.

    Biden’s failure to quickly recommit to the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, as Senator Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, provided a critical delay that has been used by opponents to undermine the difficult shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna to restore the agreement.

    The attempts to derail talks range from the introduction of the Maximum Pressure Act on April 21 to codify the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran to Israel’s cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Biden’s procrastination has only strengthened the influence of the hawkish Washington foreign policy “blob,” Republicans and Democratic hawks in Congress and foreign allies like Netanyahu in Israel.

    In Afghanistan, Biden has won praise for his decision to withdraw U.S. troops by September 11, but his refusal to abide by the May 1 deadline for withdrawal as negotiated under the Trump administration has led the Taliban to back out of the planned UN-led peace conference in Istanbul. A member of the Taliban military commission told the Daily Beast that “the U.S. has shattered the Taliban’s trust.”

    Now active and retired Pentagon officials are regaling the New York Times with accounts of how they plan to prolong the U.S. war without “boots on the ground” after September, undoubtedly further infuriating the Taliban and making a ceasefire and peace talks all the more difficult.

    In Ukraine, the government has launched a new offensive in its civil war against the ethnically Russian provinces in the eastern Donbass region, which declared unilateral independence after the U.S.-backed coup in 2014. On April 1, Ukraine’s military chief of staff said publicly that “the participation of NATO allies is envisaged” in the government offensive, prompting warnings from Moscow that Russia could intervene to protect Russians in Donbass.

    Sticking to their usual tired script, U.S. and NATO officials are pretending that Russia is the aggressor for conducting military exercises and troop movements within its own borders in response to Kiev’s escalation. But even the BBC is challenging this false narrative, explaining that Russia is acting competently and effectively to deter an escalation of the Ukrainian offensive and U.S. and NATO threats. The U.S has turned around two U.S. guided-missile destroyers that were steaming toward the Black Sea, where they would only have been sitting ducks for Russia’s advanced missile defenses.

    Tensions have escalated with China, as the U.S. Navy and Marines stalk Chinese ships in the South China Sea, well inside the island chains China uses for self defense. The Pentagon is hoping to drag NATO allies into participating in these operations, and the U.S. Air Force plans to shift more bombers to new bases in Asia and the Pacific, supported by existing larger bases in Guam, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

    Meanwhile, despite a promising initial pause and policy review, Biden has decided to keep selling tens of billion dollars worth of weapons to authoritarian regimes in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Persian Gulf sheikdoms, even as they keep bombing and blockading famine-stricken Yemen. Biden’s unconditional support for the most brutal authoritarian dictators on Earth lays bare the bankruptcy of the Democrats’ attempts to frame America’s regurgitated Cold War on Russia and China as a struggle between “democracy” and “authoritarianism.”

    In all these international crises (along with Cuba, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, Palestine, Syria and Venezuela, which are bedevilled by the same U.S. unilateralism), President Biden and the hawks egging him on are pursuing unilateral policies that ignore solemn commitments in international agreements and treaties, riding roughshod over the good faith of America’s allies and negotiating partners.

    As the Russian foreign ministry bluntly put it when it announced its countermeasures to the latest round of U.S. sanctions, “Washington is unwilling to accept that there is no room for unilateral dictates in the new geopolitical reality.”

    Chinese President Xi Jinping echoed the same multipolar perspective on April 20th at the annual Boao Asian international business forum. “The destiny and future of the world should be decided by all nations, and rules set up just by one or several countries should not be imposed on others,” Xi said. “The whole world should not be led by unilateralism of individual countries.”

    The near-universal failure of Biden’s diplomacy in his first months in office reflects how badly he and those who have his ear are failing to accurately read the limits of American power and predict the consequences of his unilateral decisions.

    Unilateral, irresponsible decision-making has been endemic in U.S. foreign policy for decades, but America’s economic and military dominance created an international environment that was extraordinarily forgiving of American “mistakes,” even as they ruined the lives of millions of people in the countries directly affected. Now America no longer dominates the world, and it is critical for U.S. officials to more accurately assess the relative power and positions of the United States and the countries and people it is confronting or negotiating with.

    Under Trump, Defense Secretary Mattis launched negotiations to persuade Vietnam to host U.S. missiles aimed at China. The negotiations went on for three years, but they were based entirely on wishful thinking and misreadings of Vietnam’s responses by U.S. officials and Rand Corp contractors. Experts agree that Vietnam would never violate a formal, declared policy of neutrality it has held and repeatedly reiterated since 1998.

    As Gareth Porter summarized this silly saga:

    The story of the Pentagon’s pursuit of Vietnam as a potential military partner against China reveals an extraordinary degree of self-deception surrounding the entire endeavor. And it adds further detail to the already well-established picture of a muddled and desperate bureaucracy seizing on any vehicle possible to enable it to claim that U.S. power in the Pacific can still prevail in a war with China.

    Unlike Trump, Biden has been at the heart of American politics and foreign policy since the 1970s. So the degree to which he too is out of touch with today’s international reality is a measure of how much and how quickly that reality has changed and continues to change. But the habits of empire die hard. The tragic irony of Biden’s ascent to power in 2020 is that his lifetime of service to a triumphalist American empire has left him ill-equipped to craft a more constructive and cooperative brand of American diplomacy for today’s multipolar world

    Amid the American triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War, the neocons developed a simplistic ideology to persuade America’s leaders that they need no longer be constrained in their use of military power by domestic opposition, peer competitors or international law. They claimed that America had virtually unlimited military freedom of action and a responsibility to use it aggressively, because, as Biden parroted them recently, “the world doesn’t organize itself.”

    The international violence and chaos Biden has inherited in 2021 is a measure of the failure of the neocons’ ambitions. But there is one place that they conquered, occupied and still rule to this day, and that is Washington D.C.

    The dangerous disconnect at the heart of Biden’s foreign policy is the result of this dichotomy between the neocons’ conquest of Washington and their abject failure to conquer the rest of the world.

    For most of Biden’s career, the politically safe path on foreign policy for corporate Democrats has been to talk a good game about human rights and diplomacy, but not to deviate too far from hawkish, neoconservative policies on war, military spending, and support for often repressive and corrupt allies throughout America’s neocolonial empire.

    The tragedy of such compromises by Democratic Party leaders is that they perpetuate the suffering of millions of people affected by the real-world problems they fail to fix. But the Democrats’ subservience to simplistic neoconservative ideas also fails to satisfy the hawks they are trying to appease, who only smell more political blood in the water at every display of moral weakness by the Democrats.

    In his first three months in office, Biden’s weakness in resisting the bullying of hawks and neocons has led him to betray the most significant diplomatic achievements of each of his predecessors, Obama and Trump, in the JCPOA with Iran and the May 1 withdrawal agreement with the Taliban respectively, while perpetuating the violence and chaos the neocons unleashed on the world.

    For a president who promised a new era of American diplomacy, this has been a dreadful start. We hope he and his advisers are not too blinded by anachronistic imperial thinking or too intimidated by the neocons to make a fresh start and engage with the world as it actually exists in 2021.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • An Afghan taxi-driver in Vancouver told one of us a decade ago that this day would come. “We defeated the Persian Empire in the eighteenth century, the British in the nineteenth, the Soviets in the twentieth. Now, with NATO, we’re fighting twenty-eight countries, but we’ll defeat them, too,” said the taxi-driver, surely not a member of the Taliban, but quietly proud of his country’s empire-killing credentials. 

    Now, after nearly twenty years of a war that has been as bloody and futile as all those previous invasions and occupations, the last 3,500 U.S. troops and their NATO brothers-in-arms will be coming home from Afghanistan.

    President Joe Biden tried to spin this as the United States leaving because it has achieved its objectives, bringing the terrorists responsible for 9/11 to justice and ensuring that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for a future attack on the United States.

    The post US Joins Past Empires In Afghan Graveyard appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The announced withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan will grant Iran one of its biggest wishes and lead to the departure of all foreign forces, which Tehran has long blamed for insecurity in the region.

    Analysts say the pullout of U.S.-led NATO forces from Afghanistan could potentially give Iran more room to maneuver within its war-torn neighbor, with which its shares cultural and religious ties.

    But if Afghanistan spirals into chaos — as some Afghans fear — then Iran could be faced with the problems created by a humanitarian and security spillover as it did during the Afghan civil war, when Tehran was faced with an influx of refugees and, later, a hostile Taliban government.

    “I think for the Iranians, I’d say, ‘Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it,’” says Colin Clarke, director of research and policy at the Soufan Group. “In other words, while Iran has been beating the drum for a U.S. withdrawal for years, there are potential second-order effects that Tehran might struggle with.”

    U.S. President Joe Biden on April 14 announced that the remaining 2,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be leaving by September 11. NATO said it will follow Washington’s timetable and pull its remaining 7,000 non-U.S. soldiers out of Afghanistan by the same date.

    Andrew Watkins, a senior Afghanistan analyst with the International Crisis Group, says the departure of U.S. and NATO forces will certainly leave something of a power vacuum, giving Tehran more space to seek influence both with Afghan officials and other power brokers in the country, including the Taliban.

    But he adds that “it is unclear how much Iran’s essentially defensive, border-oriented interests in Afghanistan would expand, if at all.”

    “Throughout the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, Iran has sought to gain influence among local actors and stymie U.S. interests, but via a low-risk, low-reward approach,” says Watkins, who notes that “Iran generally exercises more restraint on its eastern border than it often has westward looking to the [Persian Gulf and the Levant].”


    Fear Of A Vacuum

    Speaking on April 16, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described the “responsible” departure of U.S. forces as a “positive move,” saying the “presence of foreign forces has never contributed to peace and stability in our region and [their] removal will lead to at least less grounds for violence.”

    But Zarif also warned against a “vacuum” forming that the militant Taliban could try to fill. “That is a recipe for a new war in Afghanistan and we in the region cannot tolerate, with 3 million Afghan refugees in Iran, we cannot bear more burden,” he said in on online discussion with Afghan and Indian officials. He added that Iran and other countries in the region need “a stable Afghanistan, a peaceful Afghanistan.”

    Analysts say that in the case of increased violence in Afghanistan, Tehran could work with regional allies to ensure stability, fortify its borders, as well as deploy its proxy forces, which have played a key role in promoting Iran’s interests in the region.

    Tamim Asey, executive chairman of the Institute of War and Peace Studies in Kabul, says Tehran’s actions going forward will depend on its level of threat perception from Afghanistan, adding that Iran could work with regional powers that have similar interests in order to prevent the Taliban from returning to power.

    “In fact, Iran could revive the axis of Iran, Russia, and India to support a second national resistance against the Taliban if Afghanistan plunges into a civil war,” Asey, a former Afghan deputy defense minister, told RFE/RL.

    The Daesh Threat

    The Soufan Group’s Clarke says Tehran could also secure its porous border with Afghanistan with more troops if the security situation worsens. “If a U.S. withdrawal leads to an immediate return to civil war in Afghanistan, as some have predicted, Iran is going to move quickly to fortify its border and ensure that spillover violence is mitigated,” he told RFE/RL.

    In his April 16 comments, Zarif warned about the presence in Afghanistan of the extremist Islamic State (IS) group, also known as Daesh, which has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly attacks.

    “Now we see the role of Daesh; we don’t know who’s supporting Daesh in Afghanistan but of course we have some circumstantial evidence about the people behind the transfer of Daesh from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan,” Zarif said.

    He added that “Daesh is a threat to Afghanistan, to Iran, to Pakistan, to everybody — so we have a common threat.”

    Clarke says one byproduct of a U.S. withdrawal could be an uptick in IS plots and attacks targeting “Iran and or Iranian assets in Afghanistan.”

    “The Islamic State’s Afghan branch has repeatedly attacked sectarian targets and, if it hopes to rebound from a string of recent setbacks, it’ll likely resort to its playbook,” he says.

    The Fatemiyoun militia is made up of Hazara, an embattled minority in Afghanistan.


    The Fatemiyoun militia is made up of Hazara, an embattled minority in Afghanistan.

    In that case, Clarke suggests Tehran could deploy the Fatemiyoun Brigade, which has fought in Syria. The militia — whose members are reportedly recruited and trained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — is comprised mainly of men from Afghanistan’s Shi’ite minority. Between 2,500 to 3,500 Fatemiyoun fighters are believed to have returned to Afghanistan.

    In a December 2020 interview with Tolo TV, Zarif suggested the Fatemiyoun fighters could help Kabul’s fight against IS. “They are the best forces with a military background in the fight against Daesh. The Afghan government, if willing, can regroup them,” Zarif said in remarks that were criticized.

    Watkins believes all sides in Afghanistan are likely to oppose the deployment of the Fatemiyoun Brigade. “Both Taliban and the Afghan state, and many other stakeholders, would see them as foreign proxies and threats to their authority. Not to mention, the brigade is made up of Hazaras, an ethnic minority that widely feels under siege around the country, and in need of community defense [not aggressive expansion],” he says.

    Biden has said Washington will ask other regional states to “do more” to support Afghanistan.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On Thursday, April 15, the New York Times posted an article headed, “How the U.S. Plans to Fight From Afar After Troops Exit Afghanistan,” just in case anyone misunderstood the previous day’s headline, “Biden, Setting Afghanistan Withdrawal, Says ‘It Is Time to End the Forever War’” as indicating the U.S. war in Afghanistan might actually come to an end on September 11, 2021, almost 20 years after it started.

    We saw this bait and switch tactic before in President Biden’s earlier announcement about ending U.S support for the long, miserable war in Yemen. In his first major foreign policy address, on February 4, President Biden announced “we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen,” the war waged by Saudi Arabia and its allies since 2015, the war he called “a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.” Biden declared “This war has to end.”

    As with last week’s announcement that the U.S. war in Afghanistan would end, “clarification” came the following day. On February 5th, the Biden administration dispelled the impression that the U.S. was getting out of the business of killing Yemenis completely and the State Department issued a statement, saying “Importantly, this does not apply to offensive operations against either ISIS or AQAP.” In other words, whatever happens in regard to the war waged by the Saudis, the war that the U.S. has been waging in Yemen since 2002, under the guise of the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by congress authorizing the use of the U.S. Armed Forces against those responsible for the September 11 attacks, will continue indefinitely, despite the fact that neither ISIS nor Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula existed in 2001. These other “offensive operations” by the U.S. that will continue unabated in Yemen include drone strikes, cruise missile attacks and special forces raids.

    While what President Biden actually said regarding the war in Afghanistan last week was “We will not take our eye off the terrorist threat,” and “We will reorganize our counterterrorism capabilities and the substantial assets in the region to prevent re-emergence of terrorist threat to our homeland,” the New York Times could not be far off as they interpreted those words to mean, “Drones, long-range bombers and spy networks will be used in an effort to prevent Afghanistan from re-emerging as a terrorist base to threaten the United States.”

    It appears from his statements and actions regarding the war in Yemen in February and regarding the war in Afghanistan in April, that Biden is not so much concerned with ending the “forever wars” as he is with handing these wars over to drones armed with 500 pound bombs and Hellfire missiles operated by remote control from thousands of miles away.

    In 2013, when President Obama promoted drone wars claiming that “by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life” it was already known that this was not true. By far, most victims of drone attacks are civilians, few are combatants by any definition and even those targeted as suspected terrorists are victims of assassination and extrajudicial executions.

    The validity of Biden’s claim that U.S. “counter terrorism capabilities” such as drones and special forces can effectively “prevent re-emergence of terrorist threat to our homeland” is taken for granted by the New York Times– “Drones, long-range bombers and spy networks will be used in an effort to prevent Afghanistan from re-emerging as a terrorist base to threaten the United States.”

    After the Ban Killer Drones “international grassroots campaign working to ban aerial weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance,” was launched on April 9, I was asked in an interview if there is anyone in the government, military, diplomatic or intelligence communities who supports our position that drones are no deterrent to terrorism. I do not think that there is, but there are many people formerly holding those positions who agree with us. One example of many is retired General Michael Flynn, who was President Obama’s top military intelligence officer before he joined the Trump administration (and was subsequently convicted and pardoned). He said in 2015, “When you drop a bomb from a drone… you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good,” and “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just… fuels the conflict.” Internal CIA documents published by WikiLeaks document that the agency had similar doubts about its own drone program- “The potential negative effect of HVT (high value targets) operations,” the report states, “include increasing the level of insurgent support […], strengthening an armed group’s bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group’s remaining leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.”

    Speaking of the effect of drone attacks in Yemen, the young Yemeni writer Ibrahim Mothana told Congress in 2013, “Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants.” The drone wars the Biden administration seems hell bent on expanding clearly damage and set back security and stability in the countries being attacked and increase the danger of attacks on Americans at home and abroad.

    Long ago, both George Orwell and President Eisenhower foresaw today’s “forever wars” and warned of nations’ industries, economies and politics becoming so dependent on the production and consumption of armaments that wars would no longer be fought with an intention of winning them but to ensure that they never end, that they are continuous. Whatever his intentions, Joe Biden’s calls for peace, in Afghanistan as in Yemen, while pursuing war by drone, ring hollow.

    For a politician, “war by drone” has obvious advantages to waging war by ordering “boots on the ground.” “They do keep the body bag count down,” writes Conn Hallinan in his essay, Day of the Drone, “but that raises an uncomfortable moral dilemma: If war doesn’t produce casualties, except among the targeted, isn’t it more tempting to fight them? Drone pilots in their air-conditioned trailers in southern Nevada will never go down with their aircraft, but the people on the receiving end will eventually figure out some way to strike back. As the attack on the World Trade towers and recent terrorist attacks in France demonstrate, that is not all that hard to do, and it is almost inevitable that the targets will be civilians. Bloodless war is a dangerous illusion.”

    The war is never the way to peace, the war always comes home. With the exception of four known “friendly fire” casualties, every one of the many thousands of drone attack victims has been a person of color and drones are becoming another military weapon passed on from war zones to urban police departments. Technical advances and proliferation of drones as a cheaper, more politically safe way for many countries to make war on their neighbors or across the globe make forever wars more intractable.

    Talk of peace in Afghanistan, Yemen, the streets of the U.S., is not coherent while waging wars with drones. We must urgently demand a ban on the production, trade and use of weaponized drones and an end to military and police drone surveillance.”

    Activists Brian Terrell and Ghulam Hussein Ahmadi at the Border Free Center in Kabul, Afghanistan.  (Graffiti by Kabul Knight, photo by Dr. Hakim)

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.