Category: American Empire/Foreign Policy

More Evidence That Israel Deliberately Targets Civilians in Gaza

Several weeks ago I posted a breaking news story from +972 magazine discussing an Israeli military program blasphemously called “The Gospel” that used artificial intelligence (AI) to bomb civilian targets in Gaza.

Now +972 has broken a second story exposing two additional AI programs also being used for bombing Gaza. They are called Lavender and Where’s Daddy?

As the article describes, Israel’s favorite tactic is to bomb suspected — note SUSPECTED (Israel’s military leaders admit that the programs have as much as a 10% error rate) — Hamas fighters in their homes at night, slaughtering entire extended families in their sleep.

Apparently, the program title Where’s Daddy? is meant to be a cruel joke, as in: We know where daddy is sleeping, and we are going to bomb his entire family to smithereens. Ha ha ha.

Yes, Israel has intentionally been slaughtering civilians from the beginning of its war against Palestinians in Gaza.

It is no accident that the death toll is now more than 33,600 people, 70% of whom are women and children. Over 13,000 of them under the age of eighteen.

Compare that last figure to the approximately 500 children killed during the past two years of fighting in Ukraine. Here is more tragic evidence of the gruesome anti-Arab racism animating the Jewish-supremacist state of Israel.

Below is a brief excerpt of the +972 article followed by a video clip of an excellent editorial by Krystal Ball from Breaking Point news:

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as “errors” in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.

Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.

You can read the entire article here.

 

American Cardiologist Describes the Loss of More Than 90 Family Members in Gaza

Nothing I can say will add to the significance of this heartbreaking interview with Dr. Haddad.

Remember, his family has been slaughtered with American weaponry.

Jonathan Cook Talks About the Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Jonathan Cook is a British journalist living in Israel. Today he has an excellent post at Consortium News about the long-term, ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The current war is only the latest chapter in a heartbreaking, 75-year story.

Yes, the Hamas attack against Israel was a horrible war crime and deserves

The results of Israeli bombing in Gaza

to be condemned. Yet, it was a crime committed in response to 75 years of war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

Here is an excerpt:

The missing context for what’s happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night-and-day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state — when it was known as the Zionist movement.

Israel didn’t just cleanse Palestinians in 1948, when it was founded as a Western colonial project, and again under cover of a regional war in 1967. It also worked to ethnically cleanse Palestinians every day between those dates and afterwards. The aim was to move them off their historic lands and either expel them beyond Israel’s new, expanded borders or concentrate them into small ghettos inside those borders — as a holding measure until they could be expelled outside the borders.

The “settler” project, as we call it, is a misnomer. It’s really Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme. Israel even has a special word for it in Hebrew: “Judaisation,” or making the land Jewish. It is official government policy.

Gaza was the largest of the Palestinian reservations created by Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme and the most overcrowded. To stop the inhabitants spilling out, Israel built a fence-barrier in the early 1990s to pen them in. Then when policing became too hard from within the prison, Israel pulled back in 2005 to the outer perimeter barrier.

Read the rest of the article here.

Current Affairs Magazine: “Biden Couldn’t Care Less About Human Rights”

Nathan J. Robinson has an excellent piece in the online magazine Current Affairs detailing the utter disregard, indeed distain, with which President Joe Biden treats matters of human rights in international affairs.

Biden has filled his administration with neo-conservatives who push American imperialism above every other consideration. How foreign governments treat their own people, including their dissidents — most especially their dissidents — matters not one whit to this Biden administration.

He has proven his gross disinterest time and again.

Check out Robinson’s article filled with more than enough evidence to indict Biden as one of the most hard-hearted, inhumane presidents of all time.

Below is an excerpt:

. . . The pattern is consistent. Biden believes that U.S. global power matters far more than freedom and democracy (emphasis mine). As a result, he has totally ignored the pleas of human rights activists to exert even mild pressure on authoritarian regimes. 

Consider the case of Egypt. Earlier this month, the U.S. “approved $235 million in military aid for Egypt that it had withheld for the past two years because of the country’s repressive policies.” The details of the policy are ugly. That money was legally only supposed to be provided to Egypt if it met basic conditions of human rights. Eleven members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee sent a letter to Biden imploring him to withhold the aid, citing Egypt’s jailing of  “journalists, peaceful civil society activists, human rights defenders and political figures.” Biden ignored the plea and waived the legal requirement that Egypt respect basic human rights in order to receive this aid. The New York Times says the administration concluded that “national security interests outweigh congressionally mandated benchmarks for Egyptian progress on human rights.” Of course, nobody ever says how our “national security” is served by giving Egypt hundreds of millions of dollars without imposing any of the human rights requirements that Congress had demanded. Egypt has certainly learned the lesson that it need not make any human rights concessions to the U.S., because the money will keep flowing regardless. . . 

Read the entire article here.

America’s Obsession with War Has Made Us a Divided Nation

I am thinking back to that childhood adage about the hypocrisy of pointing fingers. Remember? When I point my finger at someone else, I always have three fingers pointing back at myself.

Funny how we tend to forget the wisdom of childhood.

Instead of pointing fingers, let’s look in the mirror and pay attention to our own faces.

Today Andrea Mazzarino, co-founder of Brown University’s Costs of War Project, has an article at TomDispatch analyzing the domestic blowback of

Andrea Mazzarino

America’s addiction to perpetual war.

A nation cannot keep itself on a continual war footing, as American has done for the past 20 years, without infecting its citizenry with a self-destructive “us vs. them, where’s the enemy?” attitude. It foments tribalism which spreads like a disease.

Those killer drones will come home to roost.

The article is titled “How War Divides Us.” Below is an excerpt:

As many Americans condemn Russia for its grim invasion, it’s easy to forget that for more than two decades now, others in our world have viewed our post-9/11 foreign policy in much the way we now view Russia’s — as imperialist and expansionist. After all, the U.S. invaded two countries, while using the 9/11 attacks to launch a war on terror globally that metastasized into U.S. counterterror activities in 85 nations.

This has, in fact, been the violent American century, but even less recognized here is how our war on terror helped cause us to turn on one another. It injected fear and the weaponry that goes with it into a country where relatively prosperous, connected communities like mine would have had the potential to expand and offer other Americans far more robust support.

If we don’t find a way to pay more attention to why this didn’t happen and just how we did so much negatively to ourselves, then a police-state mentality and its potential companion, civil war (like the ones we’ve seen in countries we sought to “democratize” by force of arms) may, in the end, become the deepest reality of an ever more polarized America. Of that, Donald Trump is but a symptom.

You can read the entire article here.

John Mearsheimer Analyzes the Ukraine War

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of political science and international relations at the University of

WASHINGTON, USA – FEBRUARY 21 : John Mearsheimer speaks during a panel organised by Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) Foundation in Washington, United States on February 21, 2019.
(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Chicago.

He provides a rare, sane voice in the American landscape disagreeing with the pro-war, pro-Ukrainian, anti-Russian propaganda dished out day after day by mainstream news networks.

For a well-balanced perspective integrating factors typically ignored or covered up in US broadcasts, check out Mearsheimer’s analysis here.

His most recent article appears here. It is titled, “The Darkness Ahead: Where the Ukraine War is Headed.”

Here is Prof. Mearsheimer’s most recent YouTube interview with one of my favorite, award-winning journalist, Aaron Mate.

Harvard Political Review: Barack Obama is a War Criminal

My inaugeral post on this website five years ago castigated my liberal, democratic friends for cheering former president Obama as an exemplary American president. He was not.

I pointed out only some of his war crimes in that post. But now the online journal, The Harvard Political Review, offers a more extensive examination of the presidential acts and decisions that irrefutably make the former president guilty of war crimes.

If justice were truly available in this world, both George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama would spend the rest of their lives in prison.

The article is by Prince Williams.

Here it is:

In 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided that the Nobel Peace Prize would go to a Harvard Law School graduate, an elected junior senator of Illinois, and the first Black President of the United States, Barack Obama. According to the Committee, “Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons” served as the driving force that awarded him a Nobel. However, President Obama would go on to approve more drone strikes in his first year in office than President Bush carried out during his entire administration. The alleged peacemaker, very much like his predecessors, should be considered for the label of international war criminal.

Let’s clarify: President Obama is not a pioneer of the illegal and offensive wars that the United States has engaged in during the last 20 years. Even still, he is an expansionist, reflected clearly in the development of his drone program. During his presidency, Obama approved the use of 563 drone strikes that killed approximately 3,797 people. In fact, Obama authorized 54 drone strikes alone in Pakistan during his first year in office. One of the first CIA drone strikes under President Obama was at a funeral, murdering as many as 41 Pakistani civilians. The following year, Obama led 128 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan that killed at least 89 civilians. Just two years into his presidency, it was clear that the “hope” that President Obama offered during his 2008 campaign could not escape U.S. imperialism. 

The drone operations extended to Somalia and Yemen in 2010 and 2011, resulting in more destructive results. Under the belief they were targeting al-Qaida, President Obama’s first strike on Yemen killed 55 people including 21 children, 10 of which were under the age of five. Additionally, 12 women, five of them pregnant, were also among those who were murdered in this strike. These blundered acts of murder by not only President Obama, but the U.S. government, are morally reprehensible.

Even more civilian casualties came out of Afghanistan throughout Barack Obama’s time in office. In 2014, Obama began removing troops currently deployed in the country. However, instead of this action by the president being one in a pursuit of peace and stability in the region, it only acted as an opportunity to drastically increase air warfare. Afghanistan had war rained upon them by U.S. bombardment, with the administration viciously dropping 1,337 weapons on Afghanistan in 2016. In total that year, the Obama administration dropped 26,171 bombs (drone or otherwise) across seven countries: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. The U.S., in cooperation with its allies including the Afghan government, killed 582 civilians on average annually from 2007 to 2016.

In his recent self-aggrandizing memoir “A Promised Land,” Obama defends his drone program through a messiah complex; he writes, “I wanted somehow to save them … And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.” President Obama would have the reader believe he wanted to help the suspected terrorist but simply couldn’t. In reality, he consciously and undemocratically decided the fates of thousands of lives, without due process.

With the exception of the wars themselves, the claim that former President Barack Obama is a war criminal also lies within the double-tap initiative. Double-tap drone strikes are as disturbing as they sound; these attacks are follow-up strikes on first responders as they rush to the bombed area trying to assist any survivors. In 2012, an attack on the Shawal Valley aimed at Taliban commander Sadiq Noor reportedly killed up to 14 people in a double-tap drone strike. These attacks are both morally and legally reprehensible, as they are conscious acts of murder against civilians.

These drone strikes make a strong case for categorizing Obama as an international war criminal. The 1949 Geneva Conventions, ratified by the United Nations, explicitly provides protections for not only the wounded, but also for medical and religious personnel, medical units, and medical transports. Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states that “Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations” is classified as a war crime. The law also states “intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians” also constitutes war crimes for the guilty party. Through the drone strike program and double-tap attacks, there is no question that former President Obama and his administration violated international humanitarian law. Obama’s symbolic significance cannot outshine his relationship with the imperial endeavors of the American Empire. 

You can read the article online by going here.

Clinton/Rice Interview Demonstrates Both Parties Are Equally Imperialistic

Jon Stewart recently had a joint interview with Hilary Clinton (former Democratic Secretary of State for the Obama administration) and Condoleezza Rice (former Republican Secretary of State for the Bush administration).

Below I have posted the full interview followed by two excellent analyses from a couple of my favorite news commentators: Kristal Ball (former journalist for MSNBC; currently cohost of the independent news program, Breaking Points) and Briahna Joy Gray (lawyer and political consultant with a profession pedigree too long to list here).

If you can’t watch the entire interview, I encourage you to check out both of the following commentaries. In addition to Ms. Gray’s and Ms. Ball’s excellent insights, I will add a few observations of my own:

  1. Both Clinton and Rice illustrate the inevitably corrupting effects of power and political success. The hypocrisy, self-justification, and dissimulation demonstrated by these women is astounding.  Their apparent obliviousness to the jarring disconnect between their past actions and their current “explanations” makes one wonder if a professional diagnosis of “sociopath” is a job requirement for all federal Secretaries of State.
  2. There are no differences whatsoever between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to US foreign policy. The US political establishment is monolithic on this score. Everyone is equally imperialistic, arrogant, and utterly indifferent to the extensive damage America leaves in its wake as we blithely cruise from one catastrophe to another “policing” the rest of the world.
  3. Women become warmongers as easily as men.
  4. This interview strengthens my belief in the Christian doctrine of Original Sin.
  5. Christians who understand themselves as citizens of the kingdom of God will realize that we cannot align ourselves with either of our major political parties and that the military-industrial complex stinks of fire and brimstone.

Here is the Stewart interview:

Below is Briahna Joy Gray:

Here is Kristal Ball:

 

 

Medea Benjamin Explains the War in Ukraine and How to End It

Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of the activist organization CODEPINK. She has recently published a good book investigating the various forces at work in the current war in Ukraine.

She has also released an excellent video covering in the same ground in under 19 minutes.

If you are still wondering how this war began; why the US continues to send billions of dollars in military support; what is motivating Vladimir Putin; and how this war came be brought to a peaceful end; then, by all means, you will find the answers to all your questions in Medea’s video.

What if Putin Had a Plan for Breaking Up America?

How would you react if you discovered that the Russian government had a plan for controlling the US and dividing the country into smaller regional units, with the goal of limiting American influence in the rest of the world?

I suspect that we all would be outraged. Anti-Russian sentiment would surge.

Well, guess what. Many American foreign policy experts in Washington DC have long had exactly such plans for Russia!

And, of course, Russian leaders have always known about these plans, even if they have never been adopted “officially” as US policy towards Russia.

Knowing these facts should help everyone understand — and sympathize with — Putin’s aggression sparked by NATO’s expansion to Russia’s western border.

This does not excuse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But sympathetic understanding is essential to successful negotiations for anyone hoping to end a war.

Mike Whitney’s article, “Washington’s Plan to Break Up Russian,” explains the problems well at The Greenville Post.

Click on the title above to read the entire piece. Here is an excerpt:

Washington’s animus towards Russia has a long history dating back to 1918 when Woodrow Wilson deployed over 7,000 troops to Siberia as part of an Allied effort to roll back the gains of the Bolshevik Revolution. The activities of the American Expeditionary Force, which remained in the country for 18 months, have long vanished from history books in the US, but Russians still point to the incident as yet another example of America’s relentless intervention in the affairs of its neighbors. The fact is, Washington elites have always meddled in Russia’s business despite Moscow’s strong objections. In fact, a great number of western elites not only think that Russia should be split-up into smaller geographical units, but that the Russian people should welcome such an outcome. Western leaders in the Anglosphere are so consumed by hubris and their own blinkered sense of entitlement, they honestly believe that ordinary Russians would like to see their country splintered into bite-sized statelets that remain open to the voracious exploitation of the western oil giants, mining corporations and, of course, the Pentagon. Here’s how Washington’s geopolitical mastermind Zbigniew Brzezinski summed it up an article in Foreign Affairs:

 

“Given (Russia’s) size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia’s vast natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia — composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic — would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow’s heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.”