An “outraged” Dominique Strauss-Kahn, aka DSK, is going to sue the producers of Welcome to New York, the movie inspired by the epic 2011 scandal that effectively terminated his career as head of the International Monetary Fund and possible future president of France.
US armed forces are now involved in 49 out of 54 African states, along with the former colonial powers of France and Britain, in what’s becoming a new carve-up of the continent: a scramble for resources and influence in the face of China’s growing economic role, underpinned with an escalating military presence that spreads terror as it grows. That will bring its own backlash, as did the war in Libya.
There is no legal or moral basis for saying that the US and its allies should be able to do things, which if done by other countries, would be condemned as wrong and punished with the imposition of sanctions and/or military attack or invasion. International law and the principles of non-interference in other nations should apply equally to all: regardless of the country’s political system or form of government. The British government has no more right to interfere in the internal affairs of Syria than the Syrian government has to interfere in the internal affairs of Great Britain. The US has no more right to ‘regime change’ in countries bordering Russia, than Russia has to ‘regime change’ in countries bordering the US.
Gaddafi did not order the shooting that started the false revolution in Libya. Now after the destruction of Libya, Jalil admits to the world on Libyan Channel One that the protestors that were killed in Benghazi that caused the UN and NATO to attack Libya were killed by a group of spies and mercenaries who were not Libyan. He admits that he knew the truth at the time but it was done to take down the Libyan government and break the state. He admits that he was briefed in advance that this was going to happen and that the people of Libya did not recognize the dead protestors because they wore civilian clothes and there was no one who came to their funerals as they had no relatives or friends in Libya.
The Ukraine crisis has its roots in a policy that dates back nearly 20 years. The origins of the policy can be traced to a 1997 article in Foreign Policy magazine by Zbigniew Brzezinski, titled “A Geostrategy for Eurasia.” The article makes the case that the United States needs to forcefully establish itself in Central Asia in order to maintain its position as the world’s only superpower. While many readers may be familiar with Brzezinski’s thinking on these matters, they might not know what he has to say about Russia, which is particularly illuminating given that the recent uptick in violence has less to do with Ukraine than it does with Washington’s proxy-war on Russia.
When a sexually assaulted American citizen can be falsely arrested for assaulting a police officer, brought to trial by a corrupt prosecutor whose false case is endorsed by a corrupt judge and convicted by an insouciant jury, you know that justice is dead in America.
The death of Justice is a huge problem. The US not only has the largest percentage of its population in prison of every country in the world, the US also has the largest absolute number of prison inmates, larger even than “authoritarian” China which has a population four times larger than the US. In China, despite Washington’s endless lies about “human rights abuses,” a citizen has a far lower chance of imprisonment than does a “freedom and democracy” American.
Just because Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch don’t recognize the U.N. Charter or the Kellogg Briand Pact is not a reason for us not to. Laws don’t work that way. Laws remain law until they are repealed. These laws have not been. If a memo can make a murder part of a war and therefore legal, we are obliged to ask: What makes the war legal?
On 2 May 2014, there was a massacre that was initially reported as being of 116 anti-Kiev (or independence) demonstrators at the Trade Unions Building in Odessa. The latest reliable report (from an American, George Eliason, who lives in that area) indicates it to be instead “now counted at 272 people that were tortured, gassed …, bludgeoned, …, etc.,” above and beyond the numbers who had been incinerated there by the firebombing of the building. Western news-media unfortunately seem to be doing all they can to keep the public ignorant of what went on there, and of why.
For the first time, the founder of an encrypted email startup that was supposed to insure privacy for all reveals how the FBI and the US legal system made sure we don’t have the right to much privacy in the first place
The world is changing. Formerly, there was a capitalist right and a socialist left. Today, the world is dominated by the United States and the first question that arises is whether to serve or to resist them. As in World War II, we find all ideologies in each camp. For now, Washington coordinates the alliance between the Nazis and jihadists in Europe with the blessing of the anti-Putin Russians.
The [Nigerian] military has refused the group’s offer to exchange the kidnapped girls for imprisoned Boko Haram members. (We should not assume that everyone detained as Boko Haram is actually a member – only that all detainees face imminent and arbitrary execution.)
None of the above is meant to tell Boko Haram’s “side” in this grisly story (fundamentalist religious jihadists find no favor at BAR), but to emphasize the Nigerian military’s culpability in the group’s mad trajectory – the same military that many newly-minted “Save Our Girls” activists demand take more decisive action in Borno.
In the 21st century Americans’ worst enemies are not al Qaeda, Iran, Russia, and China. America’s worst enemies are our own presidents who have declared repeatedly that the orchestrated “war on terror” gives them the right to set aside the civil liberties guaranteed to every citizen by the US Constitution. Presidential disrespect for the US Constitution is so extreme that Obama has nominated David Barron to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Barron is the Justice (sic) Department official who wrote the memos fabricating a legal justification for the Office of President to murder US citizens without due process of law.
