ISIS 5-26-2015

26, May 2015                                       ISIS

Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s criticism of Iraqi forces not having “the will to fight’ closely reflects our own reluctance to send ground forces to the region. The birth of ISIS followed the dismissal of tens of thousands of disgruntled Ba’athist soldiers and police officers by Paul Bremer following the US invasion in 2003.  We ensconced our own puppet - the thoroughly corrupt and incompetent Shiite, Nouri Maliki as prime minister who waged a pogrom against the Sunnis and voila - ISIS surged in strength and numbers beckoning radical Sunnis from around the world.   

Following our invasion, the country has proved the perfect breeding ground for Sunni radical Muslims, who have become affiliated with the Islamic State. To heap scorn and derision on the Iraq forces is unfair and unhelpful.  If we uncorked the ISIS genie we have a moral responsibility to send in ground troops to degrade and defeat ISIS. 

ISIS 5-26-2015

26, May 2015                                  ISIS

Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s criticism of Iraqi forces not having “the will to fight’ closely reflects our own reluctance to send ground forces to the region. The birth of ISIS followed the dismissal of tens of thousands of disgruntled Ba’athist soldiers and police officers by Paul Bremer following the US invasion in 2003.  We ensconced our own puppet - the thoroughly corrupt and incompetent Shiite, 

Nouri Maliki as prime minister who waged a pogrom against the Sunnis and voila - ISIS surged in strength and numbers beckoning radical Sunnis from around the world.   

Following our invasion, the country has proved the perfect breeding ground for Sunni radical Muslims, who have become affiliated with the Islamic State. To heap scorn and derision on the Iraq forces is unfair and unhelpful.  If we uncorked the ISIS genie we have a moral responsibility to send in ground troops to degrade and defeat ISIS. 

Memorial Day 5-25-2015

25, May 2015                         Memorial Day      

     

As yet another Memorial Day another fades away from our consciousness, we should demand far more accountability from our policy makers who send our young men and women to ill-defined battles waged in our name.

Our elected officials have initiated and sustained these conflicts often over massive public opposition and have rarely suffered personal tragedies on the battlefield. Former President Bush served in the National Guard and his vice-President, Cheney, successfully obtained five deferments.  President Obama isn’t a military veteran, nor are many of the presidential hopefuls who have declared or might declare a run for the White House in 2016. We should not only remember our own fallen heroes but offer our prayers and apologies to the millions of our adversaries who perished and continue to die in unnecessary wars based on the deceitful policies of our politicians. With an all-volunteer army, the rich will invariably escape the horrors of war which will increasingly be drawn from a disadvantaged population.

George Stephanopoulos 5-25-2015

25, May 2015                        George Stephanopoulos

George Stephanopoulos, ABC News' top anchor, has been rightly held to account for his hitherto close ties and undisclosed $75,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation. He was not only a passive donor but a vigorous advocate for the Clinton Foundation.

His lack of impartiality, objectivity and integrity has been severely compromised.

The Clinton Foundation has been under public scrutiny for their lack of transparency regarding donations from foreign organizations and granting special favors to Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother. As a board member, his mining company was the recipient of a highly coveted gold mining contract in Haiti orchestrated by the Clinton Foundation.

ABC’s attempt to brush off the public outcry by claiming that Stephanopoulos’s lack of public disclosure was “an honest mistake” doesn’t pass muster.

Bank Fraud 5-22-2015

22, May 2015                  Bank Fraud

Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland pleaded guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros exchanged in the $5 trillion FX spot market. UBS pleaded guilty for its role in manipulating the Libor benchmark interest rate.

Attorney General Lynch stated that this illegal activity went on every single day for the last five years or so. The financial crime is staggering in its complexity and collusion.

The Justice Department says traders used online chat rooms and coded language to manipulate currency exchange rates. Traders openly boasted that they were the cartel or the mafia as they conducted their dirty business. It also comes as no surprise that these banks will pay a paltry $3 billion for their brazen anti-trust violations and none of the individual bank employees will be liable for criminal charges.


Unless the Justice Department uses it heavy hammer on prosecuting white collar crime this type of illegal activity will surely continue. The $3 billion penalty is probably a small fraction of the profits made from these illegal trades. 

Israel 5-21-2015

21, May 2015                                    Israel

The American people should no longer have any illusions about Israel’s intentions. Mr. Netanyahu declared that Palestinians would remain under military occupation as long as he is prime minister. Peace talks have been a complete sham serving as a cover for continued expansion of Jewish settlements. Mr. Netanyanyu exposed his real goals by appointing Knesset member, Ayelet Shaked, as his justice minister, who has called “for the destruction of the entire Palestinian people, including its cities, villages, property and infrastructure.”

Responding to mounting criticism, Mr. Netanyahu abruptly cancelled his highly contentious project which called for segregating Palestinians and Israeli settlers from travelling on the same buses which is eerily similar to our ‘Jim Crow’ dark history. Israel, driven by its right-wing and religious parties, continues to suffer an erosion of its international image. 

The Obama administration’s tepid responses to Israel policies have only encouraged its misbehavior and ongoing occupation. It is time to draw a line in the sand – end the brutal occupation, settlement expansions, lift the crippling siege of Gaza or suffer the consequences – a complete halt to all economic and military aid. Failure to issue such an ultimatum would render us complicit to the ongoing subjugation of the Palestinians.

Drones 5-18-2015

18, May 2015                        Drones

A new book by renowned author, Andrew Cockburn's Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, unveils the true effects of drone warfare. A reluctance to wage wars with American boots on the ground has given rise to wars conducted by  remote operators stationed thousands of miles away from conflict zones. He and many other experts argue that despite official claims, drones intensify the hostility towards the US and make us far less safe. When family members witness the horrors of seeing their loved ones blown to pieces by drones they serve as a massive recruitment for terrorist groups. Civilians, especially children, have been severely traumatized by the weapons of terror hovering above them.Drone strikes since 2004, by very conservative estimates, have killed many hundreds of civilians in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. This includes at least several hundred children killed and many more wounded.The recent killing of two innocent people — an American and an Italian hostage — is causing our political leaders to rethink our reliance on drones. President Obama recently stated, “One of the things that makes us exceptional is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.” Nothing could be further from the truth; we are neither exceptional and we rarely ever learn from our colossal blunders.

Unequal justice 5-13-2015

13, May 2015                        Unequal justice

With prosecutions of whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou and others, Federal prosecutors have charged more public servants for leaking classified information to journalists than all previous administrations. However, leaking classified information to the Press to advance self-serving political agendas is fairly common.

It can be argued that many whistleblowers seem to have been motivated by genuine concerns of the unlawful actions of our government such as spying on its citizens and torture. The sinister activities of the National Security Agency and the abuses of the Patriot Act would not have been possible without the courageous revelations made by Snowden.

Contrast these harsh prosecutions of low-level whistleblowers with the light sentence of General Petraeus who gave his biographer and lover, Paula Broadwell, access to notes containing highly classified information.  He avoided jail time in exchange for a guilty plea of mishandling classified information. He has retained his position as a partner in a New York private equity firm and a consultant to the White House. The wide disparity in sentencing smacks of an unhealthy double standard. Reporters must have free, unimpeded access to their sources for a healthy democracy. If only whistleblowers could have pierced through the bogus official claims of Saddam’s WMD’s we could have avoided the Iraq debacle and the birth of ISIS, an opinion vigorously endorsed by President Obama.

Bin Laden – a bogus narrative 5-11-2015

11, May 2015             Bin Laden – a bogus narrative

A new report by investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, reveals that the Obama administration made a false account of the details surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden. Contrary to public assertions that Pakistan was unaware of the whereabouts of Bin Laden, top Pakistani military officials had full knowledge of his whereabouts and held him as a  virtual prisoner at the Abbottabad compound since 2006.Hersh reports that the US military paid $25 million bounty to a former Pakistan intelligence officer who provided the location of Bin Laden’s whereabouts. Numerous reports of a firefight inside the compound were completely untrue. A retired American official mocked the false assertion of US military claims of finding a trove of useful information from Bin Laden’s computers and documents stating that he was operationally irrelevant. Finally, the claim that Bin Laden was buried at sea also appears to be untrue. The false narrative was hyped up for propaganda purposes and denigrate Pakistan as ‘uncooperative’. 

Israel’s growing isolation 5-9 2015

9, April 2015              Israel’s growing isolation

Israel has elected the most right wing government in its history.  This will surely accelerate the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.  The decades of peace efforts have been tossed into the dustbin of history. The government, led by Prime Minister Netanyahu, rejected Palestinian statehood. His key ally, Jewish Home, openly advocates creating South African style, Palestinian Bantustans, which is sure to accelerate its global isolation and put it on a collision course with the United States.  Consider what is already happening; American star Lauryn Hill’s recent cancellation of a concert near Tel Aviv followed an earlier boycott of 1,000 artists in the U.K and a growing number of U.S. academic associations; Dutch and Norwegian pension funds have divested from Israeli banks. More significantly, a recent poll reveals a growing number of Jewish Americans favor boycotting products from Israel and oppose settlement expansions. Former Mossad chief, Shabtai Shavit, expressed grave concern that the growing BDS movement is a grave threat to Israel’s survival, a view endorsed by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Charter Schools 5-9-2015

9, May 2015                        Charter Schools

The Center for Media and Democracy has recently issued a new report, "New Documents Show How Taxpayer Money Is Wasted by Charter Schools,” alleging that the federal government has spent more than a $3 billion over the past two decades on charter schools, without showing any conclusive evidence that they offer a superior education than that offered by local school districts.

The Center argues that there is no oversight, regulation or accountability of Charter Schools. The policies and curriculum of these Charter Schools are driven by right-wing ideologues of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. No one really knew how much money is being spent by these schools, and how much of our tax dollars is being spent on executive pay, or outsourced to ‘for-profit’ corporations. 

Good schools should be offered to all our children irrespective of their ability to pay and out of the clutches of corporations driven solely by the profit motive.


The Obama administration has asked Congress to increase funding for charter schools by almost 50 percent. He would do well to reverse his request until more convincing data becomes available.

Israeli War Crimes 5-6-2015

6, May 2015               Israeli War Crimes

‘Breaking the Silence’ (BTS), a group of serving an ex-soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces released a report stating that the massive civilian casualties in Gaza last summer was the result of “broad ethical failures.”

Traumatized soldiers stated that the guiding principles of using minimum amount of force were “discarded’ on orders from the top military brass and political leaders.

What resulted was the wholesale slaughter and mayhem of innocent civilians, destruction of homes, schools and hospitals. During the 50-day operation 20,000 Palestinian homes were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced.

Former Israeli paratrooper Avner Gvaryahu, director of public outreach at BTS provided much of the testimony including audio tapes of soldiers who had their voices muffled out of fear of retribution. BTS is calling for an independent enquiry into what amounts to Israeli war crimes.

Cluster Bombs 5-5-2015

5, May 2015                   Cluster Bombs

According to Human Rights Watch  (HRW), the Saudi-led military coalition has recently used cluster munitions supplied by the United States near villages in Yemen’s northern Saada Province.  Hundreds of civilians have been killed in airstrikes  near a military base in Yemen’s capital, Sana, near the city of Al Hudaydah; and at a camp for internally displaced people in northern Yemen. A bomb struck a residential area in Sana killed at least 14 people, including at least five members of one family.

111 nations, including many of our NATO partners signed a treaty to outlaw cluster bombs and require the destruction of stockpiles within eight years. Sadly, our nation joined Russia, China, India Pakistan and Israel in boycotting the talks and refusing to sign the treaty. Cluster munitions, made to resemble children’s toys, are used to carpet bomb battlefields and inevitably inflict terror and mayhem on the local population. Hundreds of children suffered fatalities and serious injuries after our hasty exit from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Lebanese children were victims after Israel carpet bombed their common borders with 1 million ‘bomblets’ in 2006. Israel continues to withhold maps identifying the locations of these killing machines despite repeated requests from Lebanon. It is time our nation and our allies banned these terrifying weapons.

Junípero Serra, saint or villain? 5-2-2015

2, May 2015               Junípero Serra, saint or villain?

An explosive new book by Elias Castillo, ‘A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California's Indians by the Spanish Missions,” dispels the myth that the 21 Franciscan missions in California were idyllic sites where Franciscan padres and Native Americans lived in complete harmony. Castillo asserts that the missions, under Junípero Serra’s direction, were instructed to civilize the ‘savage’ Indians by unrelenting beatings. Drawing on extensive research he reveals the dark, sordid secrets that the missions have kept under wraps for over 100 years.

Anthony Morales, Chief Redblood of the Gabrielino Tongva Band of Mission Indians supported Castillo’s assertions and blasted the pope’s decision to canonize Junípero Serra. He stated “On all the 21 missions along the coast our people were enslaved, beaten, tortured and our women raped. It was forced labor and a forced religion; there's nothing saintly about the... atrocities on our culture, on our people."

Father Serra justified the beating of Native Americans, writing in 1780: "That spiritual fathers should punish their sons, the Indians, with blows;” making a comparison to the treatment of Native Indians in the conquest of the Americas – and therefore justifiable.

Morales demanded that the pontiff reverse his decision. Junipera Serra Highway should also be renamed to assuage the sentiments of native Indians who were, arguably, far more spiritual than their “Christian benefactors.”