A Blog from David Crump
Here is a recent report by The Empire Files detailing the history of CIA
operations in Afghanistan.
Is it any wonder that so many young Afghans are now joining the Taliban?
(Begin watching at the 1:40 mark. The specifics about Afghanistan begin at 3:30. The entire clip is 16 minutes long)
Not since the days immediately following the Twin Towers attacks on 9/11 has the war in Afghanistan received as much media attention as it is getting
today. Now, everyone is for its continuation, or so it seems.
Corporate media war-mongering knows no bounds.
President Biden’s plans to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan has suddenly turned every broadcast journalist into a distressed, hand-wringing, honorary member of Human Rights Watch, fretting and fussing over the future state of an Afghanistan free of American military forces.
Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that US forces will continue to dominate the Afghan landscape (and neighboring Pakistan) with armed drones dropping bombs and missiles into peoples’ homes, a legion of civilian contractors pursuing American business interests, and intelligence operations manipulating the government and assassinating anyone who gets in their way.
Not since music producer Phil Spector’s famous “wall of sound” have I heard such a fully orchestrated, monotonous, uniform wall of repetitious lament from corporate news broadcasters universally expressing, whether explicitly or by implication, their desire to keep US troops in a war overseas.
Never mind that this war – which has always included US attacks in neighboring Pakistan – has dragged on for over 20 years; never mind that the original mission of capturing Osama bin Laden was accomplished long ago; never mind that the recent release of the Afghanistan Papers demonstrates what many have long suspected – that no one in the Pentagon, State, or Defense Departments ever had any hope for the situation’s improvement, much less a military solution to our “why can’t we fix Afghanistan?” query.
Nevertheless, everyone from Fox News to MSNBC is now lamenting president Biden’s “irrational,” even “cowardly” decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Suddenly, it appears that American elites actually care about the fate of poor
Muslims overseas. Thoughts of a barbaric Taliban regime imposing their version of Sharia law over women and girls is more than suburban coffee table conversations can tolerate.
But the fact of the matter is that the only reason CNN and CBS news anchors now want us all to believe that Afghanistan’s future (sans US group troops) looks so devastatingly bleak, is because these same people have thoroughly and irresponsibly ignored the lives of the Afghan people for nearly 20 years.
Propaganda is not only a matter of spreading misinformation. It also requires withholding inconvenient truths.
Think about it.
How often has the American public been updated, on a regular basis, about the details of what the US presence in Afghanistan has meant for the country’s civilian population?
The answer is, rarely if ever.
How often have we been told about the tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed in the frequent US drone strikes?
What about the regular CIA assassinations; murders that can wipe out entire families, including young children?
(Below. Watch “Living Under Drones,” approx. 7 minutes)
No. Only the ignorant or the propagandists will believe that the future suddenly looks bleak for the Afghan people after America “leaves.” The truth is that sharing their country with America’s occupation army has always been a nightmare for the Afghan and Pakistani people.
Just ask the little children who instinctively run in fear every time they imagine a noise overhead because they are terrified of another drone attack.
In the early days of planning in the Oval Office, there was a nanosecond given over to the suggestion that al Qaeda should be treated as an international criminal organization, and that the Twin Towers attack should be viewed as a horrible crime rather than an act of war.
Two possible paths were laid out before president George W. Bush. The first option, with important historical precedent, is explained in a 2006 report, 9/11: Five Years Later. The Forward to this government report explains that: “Before 9/11, combating terrorism was treated largely as a law enforcement problem.”
Not anymore.
President Bush forever changed the US attitude towards “terrorism” – which still remains horribly (and conveniently) ill-defined.
Eager to declare himself “a war president,” George W. Bush acquiesced to the military bureaucracy’s (which naturally includes the weapons manufacturers who have made billions since this war began) insistence that 9/11 be viewed as an act of war requiring a military (rather than an international law-enforcement) response.
The people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Yemen, AND the United States have all suffered the devastating, inhumane consequences of that egotistical, presidential decision ever since.
Only those who have not been paying attention will now believe that US forces have been protecting Afghan women and children, civilians who will suddenly come under threat by our withdrawal.
Last week president Biden ordered more illegal airstrikes against Iraqi forces in Iraq and Syrian forces in Syria. The State Department issued a
statement (more on that below) declaring that the US was merely exercising “its right to self-defense,” echoing Israel’s favorite excuse for its illegal bombings in Gaza.
Let’s recall several crucial facts, however:
One, US military forces in both Iraq and Syria are in those countries illegally. Both are sovereign nations, whether or not we like their governments. Both governments have told the US, in no uncertain terms, that they wanted US troops OUT of their countries long ago.
Thus, we are in both countries as an illegal invading/occupying power. Under international law, such military forces have no right to “self-defense.”
We are the illegal aggressors. It is the Iraqis and Syrians who have every legal, moral right to defend themselves against the unwanted US forces that have outrageously installed themselves in their countries.
Two, Iran in a neighbor to both Iraq and Syria. The US is not. The Iraqi and Syrian governments are free to seek military assistance from anyone they choose.
Given the hostility directed against Iran by the US, and the close regional, strategic affinities linking Iraq and Syria to Iran, it is hardly surprising that local militias fighting against the unwanted US presence would seek and accept Iran’s assistance in their struggle.
That assistance does not constitute a threat against the US.
Keeping those simple facts in mind, Glenn Greenwald offers an excellent
analysis on Joe Biden’s war-mongering, which is actually a bipartisan, long-standing American practice.
It is not an accident that most of the people around the globe regularly say that the US poses THE greatest danger to the rest of the world.
Glenn’s article appears at SheerPost and is entitled, “Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria Only Serves the Weapons Industry Funding Both Parties.” Below is an excerpt (all emphases are mine):
U.S. citizens derive no benefit, but instead suffer great loss, from endless war in the Middle East. But their interests are irrelevant to decisions of bipartisan Washington.
For the second time in the five months since he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden on Sunday ordered a U.S. bombing raid on Syria, and for the first time, he also bombed Iraq. The rationale offered was the same as Biden’s first air attack in February: The U.S., in the words of Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region.” He added that “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.”
Embedded in this formulaic Pentagon statement is so much propaganda and so many euphemisms that, by itself, it reveals the fraudulent nature of what was done. To begin with, how can U.S. airstrikes carried out in Iraq and Syria be “defensive” in nature? How can they be an act of “self-defense?” Nobody suggests that the targets of the bombing campaign have the intent or the capability to strike the U.S. “homeland” itself. Neither Syria nor Iraq is a U.S. colony or American property, nor does the U.S. have any legal right to be fighting wars in either country, rendering the claim that its airstrikes were “defensive” and an “act of self-defense” to be inherently deceitful.
The Pentagon’s description of the people bombed by the U.S. — “Iran-backed militias groups” — is intended to obscure the reality. Biden did not bomb Iran or order Iranians to be bombed or killed. The targets of U.S. aggression were Iraqis in their own country, and Syrians in their own country. Only the U.S. war machine and its subservient media could possibly take seriously the Biden administration’s claim that the bombs they dropped on people in their own countries were “defensive” in nature. Invocation of Iran has no purpose other than to stimulate the emotional opposition to the government of that country among many Americans in the hope that visceral dislike of Iranian leaders will override the rational faculties that would immediately recognize the deceit and illegality embedded in the Pentagon’s arguments.
Beyond the propagandistic justification is the question of legality, though even to call it a question dignifies it beyond what it merits. There is no conceivable Congressional authorization — none, zero — to Biden’s dropping of bombs in Syria. Obama’s deployment of CIA operatives to Syria and years of the use of force to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad never had any Congressional approval of any kind, nor did Trump’s bombing of Assad’s forces (urged by Hillary Clinton, who wanted more), nor does Biden’s bombing campaign in Syria now. It was and is purely lawless, illegal. And the same is true of bombing Iraq. The 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) in Iraq, which the House just last week voted to repeal, has long since ceased to provide any legal justification for ongoing U.S. troop presence and bombing campaigns in that country.
In its statement justifying the bombing raids, Biden’s Pentagon barely even bothered to pretend any of this is legal. It did not cite either the 2002 AUMF for Iraq or the 2001 AUMF authorizing the use of force against those responsible for 9/11 (a category which, manifestly, did not include Iran, Iraq or Syria). Instead, harkening back to the days of John Yoo and Dick Cheney, the Biden Defense Department claimed that “as a matter of international law, the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense,” and casually asserted that “as a matter of domestic law, the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to protect U.S. personnel in Iraq.”
Those claims are nothing short of a joke. Nobody seriously believes that Joe Biden has congressional authority to bomb Syria and Iraq, nor to bomb “Iranian-backed” forces of any kind. As The Daily Beast‘s long-time War on Terror reporter Spencer Ackerman put it on Sunday night, discussions of legality at this point are “parody” because when it comes to the U.S.’s Endless Wars in the name of the War on Terror, “we passed Lawful behind many many years ago. Authorization citations are just pretexts written by lawyers who need to pantomime at lawfulness. The U.S. presence in Syria is blatantly illegal. Such things never stop the U.S.”
That is exactly right. The U.S. government is a lawless entity. It violates the law, including its own Constitution, whenever it wants. The requirement that no wars be fought absent congressional authority is not some ancillary bureaucratic annoyance but was completely central to the design of the country. Article I, Section 8 could not be clearer: “The Congress shall have Power . . . to declare war.” Two months after I began writing about politics — back in December, 2005 — I wrote a long article compiling the arguments in the Federalist Papers which insisted that permitting the president unchecked powers to wage war . . .
The rest of the article appears here.
I have followed Ray McGovern’s work for many years. He works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city
Washington.
His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
His latest article at AntiWar.com is entitled “New York Times Pushing the Envelope on Russia.” Mr. McGovern dismantles the latest story accusing the Russian government of hacking US agencies.
All demagogic governments think they need an enemy, real or imagined. Nothing unites a people like the fear of a common enemy. It’s an ancient tactic used to distract people from their own government’s failures and to unite them around an otherwise disreputable government establishment.
Naturally, career politician Joe Biden understands these things very well, as do the various agencies and corporate powers that benefit from keeping the American people misinformed and distracted.
The corporate media are not to be trusted, folks. Not at all…
Here is Ray’s piece:
If Wednesday morning’s passive-voice (“Russian hackers are accused of”), evidence-free New York Times article titled “Attempted Hack of R.N.C. and Russian Ransomware Attack Test Biden” has a familiar ring, look who wrote it. The senior author is David Sanger, the NYT’s chief Washington correspondent. Based on Sanger’s unenviable record, the story he wrote with Nicole Perlroth can be dismissed as a proverbial nothingburger with Sanger sauce.
The article claims that Russian hackers breached a contractor for the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week “around the same time that Russian cybercriminals launched the largest global ransomware attack on record”. Sanger and co-author Nicole Perlroth cannot resist editorializing in the first paragraph that the “incidents are testing the red lines set by President Biden” at the June 16 summit with Russian President Putin. Biden, they noted, “presented Mr. Putin with a list of 16 critical sectors of the American economy that, if attacked, would provoke a response”.
The NY Times does not seem to know if the RNC is included among those 16. Indeed, there is little sign that the Times actually knows what those 16 critical sectors are. No worries, the Russians nonetheless “are accused” of activities that “test those red lines”.
The Times, and Sanger in particular, have shown themselves receptive to parts of our government (especially the security services) as well as to those who need an enemy to justify huge defense spending – all of whom have a deep vested interest in painting Russia and Putin in the most dangerous colors. It is a safe bet that this is what is going on here.
Sanger was first off the blocks in parroting former CIA Director John Brennan’s concoction, in the misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” of Jan. 6, 2017, that Putin personally directed the “hacking of the DNC emails”. Those who rely on the NT Times do not know this yet, but testimony taken under oath by the House Intelligence Committee on Dec. 5, 2017 revealed that no one – not the Russians, no one – hacked those emails.
That testimony was made public on May 7, 2020, 14 months ago, but the mainstream media have suppressed it. Clearly, it does not fit the Times’s narrative. The modus operandi of today’s NYT seems to be “only the news that fits we print”. See: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/sh21.pdf. AND New House Documents Sow Further Doubt That Russia Hacked the DNC.
Still, it is hard to believe how Sanger nor Perlroth (who specializes in cyber security) can pretend to be unaware of the that House Intelligence Committee testimony.
While for the past five years Sanger has been concentrating on the “threat” from Russia and parroting grist from his CIA feeders, he has a long unenviable record as mouthpiece for those asserting WMD in Iraq, to those claiming falsely that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons, to those contriving the story about the Russians paying bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops.
His most disreputable performance came in the months before the March 2003 attack on Iraq. For example, Sanger reported “Weapons of Mass Destruction” as flat fact no fewer than seven times in this article of July 29, 2002.
Call me “quaint” or “obsolete”, but back in the day we intelligence analysts looked closely at a source’s record before we put his/her words into a serious report.
I am sure that almost everyone knows by now that, all across the country, Republican state legislatures are proposing a variety of new election laws
that will effectively disenfranchise large numbers of voters, particularly the elderly and people of color.
The Supreme Court has just upheld the legality of two such laws in Arizona.
In contrast to the CBN anchor, Gordon Robertson, who simply vents his spleen against “liberals” while misrepresenting everything at stake in these current voting rights contests, Mehdi Hasan provides a well-informed discussion (approximately 13 minutes) of what is at stake in this Supreme Court decision.
Let’s remember some important details crucial to understanding the context of the court’s decision.
The leaders in the Republican party continue to march towards authoritarianism, proving day after day that they really do not believe in democracy or the right of every citizen to vote.
Now, the US Supreme Court is helping them.
Andrew Bacevich offers a candid obituary of former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who died this week. Bacevich speaks with a level of moral
clarity that you will not find in the main stream outlets which specialize in the hagiography of establishment figures.
Bacevich is the president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s a retired colonel and Vietnam War veteran. He is also professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University and author of several books. His most recent book, just out, is titled After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. In May, he wrote a piece for The Boston Globe headlined “My son was killed in Iraq 14 years ago — who’s responsible?”
I have read a number of Bacevich’s books and they have all been informative, historically astute, and prophetic in their conclusions. I highly recommend anything Col. Bacevich writes.
He is also a devout Roman Catholic whose Christian faith informs his perspective on life and international relations. He cares deeply about everyone’s humanity, and so, is regularly a critic of US policies overseas.
Take a few moments to hear the truth about Rumsfeld’s legacy. It ain’t pretty. The video is approximately 18 minutes long. Below is Bacevich’s summary of Rumsfeld’s legacy:
I don’t expect that there’s going to be any revision of Donald Rumsfeld’s reputation in the future. He was a catastrophically bad and failed defense secretary who radically misinterpreted the necessary response to 9/11, and therefore, caused almost immeasurable damage to our country, to Iraq, to the Persian Gulf, more broadly. And I don’t think there’s any way to disguise that.
This what happens when single issue voters applaud the appointment of anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court while ignoring, or remaining oblivious to, the fact that these same justices are strongly biased toward pro-corporate, anti-worker policies.
The Supreme Court this week ruled 8-1 in favor of corporate giants Nestle
and Cargill who were being sued by former child laborers accusing the two companies of trafficking in child slavery in the west
African nations of the Ivory Coast and Ghana.
According to the corporations’ defense attorney, the corporations “could not be sued for complicity in child trafficking because they are corporations, not individuals.”
How convenient.
Those of us old enough to remember the Citizen United decision in 2010 will recall that, in that case, the Supreme Court ruled in exactly the opposite direction, declaring that corporations are people and therefore able to contribute massive amounts of dark money to US political campaigns.
Many people warned in advance that the current slate of conservative, pro-
corporate Supreme Court justices would have a disastrous effect on workers’ rights in this country.
The Supreme Court’s exoneration of two US corporations who knowingly profit immeasurably from the exploitation of child slavery in west Africa is entirely predictable.
Congratulations to all those evangelical activists who lobbied vociferously for the appointment of “pro-life” justices to the US Supreme Court! You got what you wanted. The desperately poor, exploited, enslave children of the third-world thank you.
Below is an excerpt from the article by Julia Conley at Common Dreams, “‘Dangerous Precedent’: US High Court Sides With Corporate Giants Nestle and Cargill in Child Slavery Case.” I encourage you to follow up the numerous links included in the article:
Jim Hightower has an article at ScheerPost on the so-called labor shortage in the US economy and the airy-fairy theorizing now coming from America’s
most wealthy about how to solve the problem.
I live in Montana. Another state with a multi-millionaire governor (Greg Gianforte) who is planning to terminate the $300/week of extra unemployment benefits granted by the federal government in its most recent relief package.
This is how callous capitalists force underpaid workers to return to low wage, high risk jobs. It’s a form of wage slavery similar to the death grip that old-fashion “company towns” once held over coal miners and railway workers.
It’s called CLASS WARFARE. The haves against the have-nots. It’s the American way.
As Heidi Shierholz writes at the Economic Policy Institute, there is actually little evidence that the economy is currently experiencing a labor shortage. While citing a number of different factors at work, she explains:
…the footprint of a bona fide labor shortage is rising wages. Employers who truly face shortages of suitable, interested workers will respond by bidding up wages to attract those workers, and employers whose workers are being poached will raise wages to retain their workers…
But, of course, capitalists like Gianforte don’t think to raise wages for the working class. Instead, they think of ways to control workers, strip them of the few benefits that have come their way (after a pandemic!), and empower the owners who refuse to pay their workers a living wage.
Personally, I would love to see statewide labor strikes in every state where rich governors have instituted such predatory anti-worker, pro-capitalist shenanigans rather than doing the obvious — institute a $15 minimum wage.
Hightower’s piece hits the nail on the head with a good resource for more information at the end. It’s entitle “There’s No ‘Labor Shortage.’ There’s a Wage Shortage.”
Here is it:
To find workers, there’s a free-enterprise solution right at employers’ fingertips: raise pay, improve conditions, and show respect.
At a recent congressional hearing on America’s so-called “labor shortage,” megabanker Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, offered this insight: “People actually have a lot of money, and they don’t particularly feel like going back to work.”
Dimon is a billionaire who may be unaware that most people are living paycheck to paycheck. Since COVID-19 hit, millions have lost their jobs, savings, and even homes. Relief measures have helped, but ordinary people are not exactly lollygagging around the house, counting their cash.
Instead of listening to the uber-rich class ignorance of Dimon (who pocketed $35 million in pay last year), Congress ought to be listening to actual workers explain why they’re not rushing back to the jobs being offered by restaurant chains and such.
These workers would point out that there’s no labor shortage — there’s a wage shortage.
More fundamentally, there’s a fairness shortage.
It was not lost on restaurant workers, for example, that while millions of them were jobless last year, their corporate CEOs were grabbing millions, buying yachts, and living large. Yet more than half of laid-off restaurant workers couldn’t even get unemployment benefits because their wages had been too low to qualify.
Then there’s the high risk of COVID exposure for restaurant employees, an appalling level of sexual harassment in their workplace, and demeaning treatment from abusive bosses and customers.
No surprise, then, that more than half of employees said in a recent survey that they’re not going back to those jobs. After all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked.
So rather than demanding that government officials force workers to return to the old exploitative system, corporate giants should try the free-enterprise solution right at their fingertips: Raise pay, improve conditions, and show respect.
In short, create a place where people want to work! For a straightforward view from workers themselves, go to OneFairWage.site.
The city of Jaffa was a major metropolitan area when it was attacked by Jewish forces on May 13, 1948, two days before the end of the British Mandate over Palestine.
After three weeks of siege and attacks, Jaffa fell to Jewish troops. Those troops immediately began the expulsion, the ethnic cleansing, of Jaffa’s Palestinian population.
By the time they were finished, 50,000 people from Jaffa alone — all of them Palestinians — had been expelled, pushed into the Mediterranean Sea, or sent packing among the streams of destitute refugees looking for safety.
Many of these refugees died along the road. They were death marches.
Ebtihaj is now 86 years old. In April 1948 she was just a little girl, but she well remembers being forced from her home and expelled from Jaffa.
She vividly recalls the Jewish soldiers who shot and killed her unarmed brother as he watched them drive into town from his doorway.
Listen to her story here:
Recently Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Central American country of Guatemala, the jumping off point for the folks braving a dangerous overland journey to our southern border.
She told them, “Don’t do it. Do not come.”
She wasn’t worried about the risks these people would take in bringing their children to the US. Her motives were purely political, as the Republicans continue to browbeat President Biden over the pressures of (illegal) immigration.
The brutal irony of Harris’ order to Central America was the way it exemplified the history of US/Latin American relations. Once again, the USA is telling those Spanish-speaking southerners what they can and cannot do.
If only the people of Latin America had been able to tell the Americans, “Do not come. Stay home. Leave us alone.”
All of the countries in Central America, and almost all in South America, have been the victims of US-led military coups, US-trained death squads, political assassination’s, CIA interference with their democratically elected governments, and neoliberal economic manipulations that keep them as perpetual debtor states.
For just one example, journalists Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of The Grayzone have produced a new documentary (approximately 13 minutes long) outlining current US efforts to destabilize the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua, close neighbor to Guatemala.
It’s called “How US govt-funded media fueled a violent coup in Nicaragua.”
You will never hear these facts from Kamala Harris or American media: