Oh what fun, the
United Nations Security Council met last week for some kind of United Nations
Intervention for dysfunctional world leaders.
And what a dissing, pissing match it was. First off America’s top stooge took precious
time from his vacations and basketball games to present the case for America’s
illegal bombing of a sovereign nation, Syria.
Obama ordered the bombing of Syria without prior approval of the U.S. Congress
or the United Nations, something any other world leader would be on trial in The
Hague for.
Yet, after arming
the Syrian rebels for three years to remove their elected president, after
countless civilian deaths and destruction that will last for centuries, Obama’s
address to the United Nations was a big “fuck you!” Here’s Dana Milbank’s take at the WashingtonPost.
Excerpt:
This
is how a Nobel Peace Prize laureate goes to war.
He
smiles warmly at the members of the U.N. General Assembly. He mentions his
grandmother’s village in Kenya and notes that “Islam teaches peace.” He admits
his country’s own flaws, praises “the path of diplomacy and peace,” and asserts
that lasting gains cannot be “won at the barrel of a gun.”…
“In
the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings have been beheaded,
with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world,”
he says.
Has
Obama ever heard of Mexico? There are
beheadings of people there all the time?
Are we going to bomb Mexico? In
2013 the BBC had a story:
Facebook beheading video:
Who was Mexico's Jane Doe? By Will Grant
BBC News, Mexico City
Excerpt:
In
the grainy footage, the woman is on her knees in jeans and a pink top, before a
masked man holding a knife behind her says in a gruff voice: "Well,
gentleman, this is what happens to all those in the Gulf Cartel. On behalf of
Los Zetas."
The
rest of the video is a gruesome 40 seconds of cold-blooded murder, which caused
international controversy recently when it was posted on Facebook.
"Irresponsible"
was the word used by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, about the
social network's policy permitting the video to be uploaded. After a day or so of impassioned debate
on both sides, Facebook reversed its decision and took the video down.
Yes, that’s the
extent of the outrage of all of the beheadings in Mexico that have been taking
place for years. But, anyway back to
Obama’s sermon:
“No god condones this terror. No grievance
justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning, no negotiation, with this
brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the
language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad
coalition to dismantle this network of death.”
Good God, that
paragraph is so full of contradictions it’s crazy. Let’s start with “no god condones this
terror.” That’s absolutely right, Pope Francis said so. February 25th, Religious ServiceNews:
Excerpt:
VATICAN
CITY (RNS) Pope Francis on Tuesday (Feb. 25) lashed out at public indifference
to the many wars raging around the globe, with especially harsh words for arms makers who he said profit from the
violence and suffering.
“Think of the starving children in the refugee
camps. Just think of them: this is fruit of war!” Francis said at the daily Mass he
celebrates in the chapel of the Vatican guesthouse where he lives.
“And
if you want,” he continued, “THINK OF
THE GREAT DINING HALLS, OF THE PARTIES THROWN BY THE BOSSES OF THE WEAPONS
INDUSTRY THAT MAKES THE ARMS THAT WIND UP (IN THOSE CAMPS). A sick child,
starving, in a refugee camp — and the great parties, the fine life for those
who manufacture weapons.”
But
Francis did not spare the public, either.
“Every
day, in the newspapers, we find wars,” he said, “and the deaths seem to be part
of a normal day’s tally. We are accustomed to reading these things.” It seems,
he added, “as though the spirit of war has taken control of us.”
Pope Francis is
right, all this war is the fault of the people, because they just don’t
care. When Obama went to congress to get
permission to bomb the shit out of Syria in 2013 the public overwhelmingly
objected and the bombing was put on hold until the public could be “softened up.” The
most recent Fox polls show around 70% of the American people want to bomb
Syria.
This article by
Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept is sooo on point.
Excerpt:
The
U.S. today began bombing targets inside Syria, in concert with its lovely and
inspiring group of five allied regimes: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab
Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan.
That
means that Syria becomes the 7th predominantly Muslim country bombed by 2009
Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama - after Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia,
Libya and Iraq.
The
utter lack of interest in what possible legal authority Obama has to bomb Syria
is telling indeed: Empires bomb who they want, when they want, for whatever
reason (indeed, recall that Obama bombed Libya even after Congress explicitly
voted against authorization to use force, and very few people seemed to mind
that abject act of lawlessness; constitutional constraints are not for warriors
and emperors)…
It
was just over a year ago that Obama officials were insisting that bombing and
attacking Assad was a moral and strategic imperative. Instead, Obama is now
bombing Assad's enemies while politely informing his regime of its targets in
advance. It seems irrelevant on whom the U.S. wages war; what matters is that
it be at war, always and forever.
Yes, if at first
you don’t succeed use the press to “soften up” the public’s appetite for war. Greenwald ends his article with:
If
there is anyone who actually believes that the point of all of this is a moral
crusade to vanquish the evil-doers of ISIS (as the U.S. fights alongside its
close Saudi friends), please read Professor As'ad AbuKhalil's explanation today
of how Syria is a multi-tiered proxy war. As the disastrous Libya
"intervention" should conclusively and permanently demonstrate, the
U.S. does not bomb countries for humanitarian objectives. Humanitarianism is the pretense, not the purpose.
Yes, Dana Milbank, Pope
Francis and Glenn Greenwald all can see through the bullshit being tossed
around at the U.N Intervention. So who’s
next at the Intervention? Oh, oh it’s
Abbas of Palestine. That’s interesting, I’m
sure he’s got some shit on his mind. Here’s
an opinion piece from The Guardian Liberty Voice by Mathew Channer.
Excerpt:
Palestinian People Victims of Israeli Genocide
President
Mahmoud Abbas’s declaration that his Palestinian people are the victims of
“genocide” at the hands of the Israeli military has caused a global uproar this
week. After the President’s address at the United Nations, furious Israeli
President Benjamin Netanyahu is already on his way to appear before the U.N. on
a mission to defend his people and refute what he says are lies directed at his
country.
Ha ha ha, I wish
I could have been there. You betcher ass
Netanyahu’s on his way.
Such
an accusation is not to be taken lightly. Defined as the deliberate murder of
large masses of people, especially those of particular nationality or
ethnicity, there are many who would argue that genocide is a very appropriate
term for the crisis in Palestine, especially in the Gaza Strip.
The
most recent conflict in Gaza claimed the lives of over 2,100 Palestinians in
just 50 days. Even though Israel’s Operation “Protective Edge” was launched to
combat Hamas fighters that were firing rockets across the border from within
Gaza, the excessive tally of civilian deaths drew international condemnation.
Yes,
international condemnation but not in the good old U.S. of A. In America our response to the slaughter of
the Palestinians was quite different, just ask Information Clearing House:
US
Complicit In Gaza Slaughter Supplies Israel With Bombs Amid Gaza Blitz
Pentagon
says Israel allowed to tap local US arms stockpile in past week to resupply it
with grenades and mortar rounds.
By
Al Jazeera and Agencies
July
31, 2014 "ICH" - "Al Jazeera" - The United States has
allowed Israel, waging an offensive in the Gaza Strip, to tap a local US arms
stockpile in the past week to resupply it with grenades and mortar rounds, Rear
Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon's press secretary, has said.
The
munitions were located inside Israel as part of a programme managed by the US
military and called War Reserves Stock Allies-Israel (WRSA-I), which stores
munitions locally for US use that Israel can also access in emergency
situations.
Israel,
however, did not cite an emergency when it made its latest request about 10
days ago, a defence official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of
anonymity.
Channer ends his
article with:
It
appears that Abbas does not need to look very far to find an overwhelming
amount of evidence that his Palestinian people are victims at the hands of an
Israeli genocide. And while Netanyahu flies angrily towards New York where he
will no doubt deliver a passionate and well-rehearsed account of Israeli
morality and Palestinian evil, innocent civilians will continue to die in the
Gaza Strip.
While the U.N. may yet
decide that Abbas is out-of-order and that his accusations must be withdrawn,
there is no changing the fact that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip will remain
the victims of a very real and very obvious war crime.
Opinion
by Mathew Channer
Being
that this is a U.N. Intervention, it’s only fair to let Netanyahu respond to
Abbas. This is the take of the JerusalemPost:
Excerpt:
In
far-reaching speech to General Assembly, Netanyahu slams Abbas, indicating way
to peace is no longer through direct talks, but via wider rapprochement with
Arab world…
Though
he never mentioned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas by name,
Netanyahu leveled a blistering attack on charges the PA leader made last week
at the UN, charging that Israel was a racist state committing genocide.
Netanyahu
said that while in the past the Jews were demonized with blood libel charges
and accused of deicide, “today the Jewish state is demonized with the apartheid
libel, and charges of genocide”…
Then,
referring to Israel’s actions in carrying out the Gaza operation in the summer,
he asked, “In what moral universe does
genocide include warnings to the enemy civilian population to get out of harm’s
way, or ensuring that they receive tons of humanitarian aid each day, even
as thousands of rockets are being fired at us, or setting up a field hospital to aid their wounded?”…
 |
| Enemy civilian population gets out of way |
Netanyahu
slammed the UN Human Rights Council for setting up a team to investigate
Israeli “war crimes,” not those of Hamas, and said this sent a message to all
terrorists everywhere that they could use civilians as human shields.
Christ, this
world is run by lunatics. So while the
Intervention doesn’t seem to be helping Israel and Palestine, who else has something
they want to talk about at the Intervention?
Russia? USA Today weighs in with
this article.
Excerpt:
Russia, Cuba give views on
Ukraine, Syria
UNITED
NATIONS -- The foreign ministers of Russia and Cuba Saturday delivered scathing
critiques of U.S. support for the Ukrainian government and U.S. military action
against radical Islamist terrorists in Syria.
"The
U.S.-led Western alliance that portrays itself as a champion of democracy, rule
of law and human rights within individual countries, acts from directly the
opposite positions in the international arena," said Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov. The West rejects "the sovereign equality of
states" and is "trying to decide for everyone what is good or
evil."
Cuban
Foreign Minister Bruno RodrÃguez depicted Western accounts of what's happening
in Ukraine and elsewhere as a result of corporate-controlled international
media that "manipulate facts."
Oh, oh, danger,
danger someone is telling the truth.
The
conflict in Ukraine is the result of an "attempt to deploy NATO up to the
borders of Russia" and "will have serious implications for the peace
and security of Europe," Rodriguez said. Sanctions imposed on Russia to
punish it for its meddling "are immoral and unjust," he said.
Rodriguez
also described the three year Syrian civil war that grew out of a peaceful
democracy movement the result of "foreign intervention" in Syrian
affairs that he said "must come to an end."
"It
is inconceivable that Western powers arm terrorist groups to pit them against
one state while fighting to counter them in another state, when it comes to
Iraq," Rodriguez said, referring in one sweep to Western-backed opposition
forces seeking to oust Syria's Assad regime and radical extremists who've used the
conflict to seize large swaths of territory straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border.
Good point, it
reminds me of an article by Glen Ford that I read in Black Agenda Report called
“ISIS Who’s Your Daddy.”
Obama and His Head-Chopping
Friends
President
Obama has declared war on ISIS, the renegade jihadists that have turned on
their former masters in NATO and the royal courts of Arabia. Nearly four
decades ago, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan spent billions to create, from
scratch, an international jihadist network to torment a leftwing government in
Afghanistan…
Until
the advent of ISIS, Saudi Arabia led the world in executions by beheading,
often leaving the decapitated bodies on display in public squares. The Saudis
have hired American public relations outfits to plant articles in the U.S.
corporate press, disavowing any connection between the royal family and its
wayward children in ISIS and other al Qaida off-shoots – while, at the same
time, stepping up the pace of their own beheadings…
The
royal Arabian fat cats who, along with the U.S., have funded the proxy war
against Syria for the last three years, are now embroiled in a proxy war
against each other in both Syria and Libya.
Yes, lie in bed
with dogs and get fleas. That should be
a lesson to you Saudi Arabia.
The
U.S. wants to get on with regime change in Syria, but ISIS has even bigger
plans for regime change in the Arab world, including lopping off the heads of
America’s friends. But, Washington will not give up its dirty war against
Syria.
Instead,
Obama is attempting to merge that war with the fight against ISIS, by somehow
making stupid Americans believe that Syrian President Assad is secretly allied
with the same jihadists that have been beheading Syrian soldiers and civilians
since 2011.
Well you know
something Glen, it isn’t going to be very hard to make “stupid Americans
believe” anything. Just throw it into
the Rupert Murdoch echo chamber and voila, beheading, war, war, war.
So, is there
anyone else at the U.N. Intervention worth hearing from? Why yes there is. Let’s hear from Argentina’s President,
Kirchner. From Yahoo News:
Excerpt:
At UN, Argentina's Kirchner
slams debt 'vultures'
United
Nations (United States) (AFP) - Argentine President Cristina Kirchner,
addressing the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, lashed out at "vulture
funds" that are pursuing her country for payment on Argentine bonds they
hold.
But
she said her government, which fell into default on its borrowings at the end
of July due to a US court ruling supporting the funds' complaint, would make
good on its debt whatsoever.
I’ll just bet
Kirchner was slamming debt “vultures.
Remember the article in July where a crooked NY judged ordered Argentina
to default on their creditors payments unless they paid off some vulture hedge
funds?
Excerpt:
The
hedge fund firm of billionaire Paul E. Singer has about 300 employees, yet it
has managed to force Argentina, a nation of 41 million people, into a position
where it now has to contemplate a humbling surrender.
Argentina
on Wednesday failed to make scheduled payments on its government bonds. The
country has the money to pay the bonds. But a federal court in Manhattan has
ruled that unless Argentina settles its debt dispute with Mr. Singer’s firm,
Elliott Management, it is barred from paying its main bondholders.
Yes, Argentina
is getting the full “mobster treatment” from the American courts. You either pay the mafia or we break your
knees.
The
government of Argentina now faces a stark choice: Try to restart negotiations
with investors it has repeatedly called “vultures,” who have insisted on full
repayment. Or it can remain ensnared in a default that could weigh on the
country’s fragile economy and unsettle global markets.
Nice
choices. So let’s see what Kirchner had
to say at the U.N. Intervention.
Argentina
is "a country that is willing to pay and is able to pay. And will pay
despite the harassment of the vulture funds," she said.
Argentina
is still struggling with the aftermath of a default on nearly $100 billion in
debt in 2001, with the two hedge funds it labels vultures battling the country
in US courts.
Kirchner blamed as well the
"complicity of the US justice system" in supporting the claims of the
hedge funds, which bought defaulted Argentine debt on the cheap, and then sued
the government for full payment in US federal court after refusing to join most of the
country's creditors in restructuring its debt.
A
New York judge has forbidden the country from servicing its mainstream debt
unless it first pays at least $1.3 billion to the hedge funds.
The
judge also blocked agent banks from transferring debt service payments from
Buenos Aires to its regular creditors, creating a complex legal battle that has
set back the struggling Argentine economy and prevented it from accessing
global capital markets.
And guess what? As of today, September 30th
Argentina has been held in contempt of court, albeit a crooked American
court. From BBC News:
Excerpt:
Argentina found to be in
contempt of court by US judge
A
US judge has ruled that the Republic of Argentina is in contempt of court for
refusing to obey an order to repay the debt it owes to two US hedge funds.
Argentina has been mired in
a US court dispute with the funds, which bought the country's debt at a
discount after its default in 2001.
In July, Judge Thomas
Griesa ruled that Argentina must repay the funds before it can repay other
bondholders.
Argentina
refused, sending the country into default.
Earlier
on Monday, Argentina's ambassador to the US warned in a letter to US Secretary
of State John Kerry that if the country was found to be in contempt of court,
it would represent "unlawful interference" in Argentina's
domestic affairs.
Well, Argentina
if you think that lying crook John Kerry is going to go against those crooked
hedge funds, well let's just say “it ain’t gonna happen.”
So how did they wrap up
this Intervention? U.S. News:
Excerpt:
Obama Leads Security
Council to Denounce ISIS
Heads
of state express support at Security Council session, except for Argentina's
Kirchner, who uses cannibal analogy.
One
of the few departures from the unified rhetoric came from Argentine President
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who delved into a lengthy, at times incongruous series of remarks about terrorism and its
history in Argentina.
She
said she had been directly targeted by extremist groups simply because she
knows Pope Francis…
Kirchner
also criticized the international response to the Islamic State group threat in
Iraq and Syria, particularly the U.S.-led mission to arm and train Syrian
opposition rebels at camps in Saudi Arabia.
She
referenced other historical missions, such as the U.S. effort to arm the Afghan
mujaheddin against Soviet invaders, or providing military aid to Saddam
Hussein’s government in the 1980s. These
missions paved the way for the creation of groups such as al-Qaida, she said.
In the end,
sanity was the loser at the UN Intervention.
As a matter of fact, it became less of an Intervention and more of a
Meeting of Enablers. Too bad. Then it was off for the feast that Pope
Francis spoke of:
“THINK OF THE GREAT DINING
HALLS, OF THE PARTIES THROWN BY THE BOSSES OF THE WEAPONS INDUSTRY THAT MAKES
THE ARMS THAT WIND UP (IN THOSE CAMPS). A sick child, starving, in a refugee camp — and the great
parties, the fine life for those who manufacture weapons.”
Amen
By: Patricia Baeten
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