Today's Missing News

3:11:14 PM EDT

 

 

Analysis from doha

an edited excerpt

 

 

Presidential candidate Barack Obama “committed to withdrawing fighting troops from Iraq before experiencing the so-called progress on the ground and regardless of whether the U.S. is winning or not. That is smart.…

 

“Obama also committed to increasing the number of fighting brigades in Afghanistan. That … is not so smart.…

 

 

“His logic follows that Washington needs to withdraw troops from Iraq and re-direct them to Afghanistan—the centre of the ‘war on terror’—where the U.S. military is over extended.…

 

“…Obama failed to explain why killing more Afghans rather than killing Iraqis will make Americans safer, or how adopting the Bush-McCain rhetoric on the ‘war on terror’ will win him the presidency. …

 

“…If the last half century is any guide, Democrats have generally lost elections when they played into Cold War Republican militarism.…

 

 

“Candidate Obama needs to approach Iraq and Afghanistan with the same sane and cool-headed strategy of constructive diplomatic and regional engagement paralleled with military disengagement.…”

 

 

“Obama: Commander-in-(mis)chief?”  By Al Jazeera Senior Political Analyst Marwan Bishara (a Middle East and strategic affairs specialist), Al Jazeera English IMPERIUM Sunday, July 20, 2008: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/imperium/2008/07/2008720

 

 

 

MORE THAN A MILLION DEAD; MORE THAN FOUR MILLION DISPLACED. Updated July 20, 2008: U.S. Deaths in U.S.-led Invasion and Occupation (accurate figures unknown): Just Foreign Policy:  http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html: Iraqi deaths due to U.S. Invasion: 1,236,604. Iraq/Afghanistan Casualties http://www.icasualties.org/oef/: U. S. deaths in Iraq 4,125 (all 4,439). U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan: 558 (all coalition fatalities: 895). [http://www.antiwar.com/casualties figures since March 19, 2003, Iraq: U.S. wounded 23,000-100,000; fatalities 4,124]. Iraq BodyCount Civilian deaths, reported from news wires, resulting from the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/: 86,017-93,836.

 

 

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2:07:34 PM EDT

 

Speech edited excerpt

clb

 

“...Our Revolution [in the early 20th century] had to be for the purpose of

accelerating our evolution to a higher plateau of humanity.…

 

… [The] American revolution, at this stage in our history and in the evolution of technology and of the human race, is not about Jobs or health insurance or making it possible for more people to realize the American Dream of upward mobility.

It is about acknowledging that we Americans enjoy middle class comforts at the expense of other peoples all over the world.

It is about living the kind of lives that will end the galloping inequality both inside this country and between the Global North and the Global South, and also slow down global warming.

It is about creating a new American Dream whose goal is a higher humanity instead of the higher standard of living which is dependent upon Empire.

About practicing a new more active, global and participatory concept of citizenship

About becoming the change we want to see in the world

 

The courage, commitment and strategies required for this kind of revolution are very different from those required to storm the Kremlin or the White House. Instead of viewing the American people as masses to be mobilized in increasingly aggressive struggles for higher wages, better jobs or guaranteed health care, we must have the courage to challenge them and ourselves to engage in activities that build a new and better world by improving the physical, psychological, political and spiritual health of ourselves, our families, our communities, our cities, our world and our planet.

... [It] is not enough to organize mobilizations calling on Congress and the President to end the war in Iraq.

We must also challenge the American people to examine why 9/11 happened and why so many people around the world who, while not supporting the terrorists, understand that they were driven to these acts by anger at the U.S. role in the world, e.g. supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine, overthrowing or seeking to overthrow democratically-elected governments, and treating whole countries, the world’s peoples and Nature only as a resource enabling us to maintain our middle class way of life.

We have to help the American people find the moral strength to recognize that, although no amount of money can compensate for the countless deaths and indescribable suffering that our criminal invasion and occupation have caused the Iraqi people, we, the American people, have a responsibility to make the material sacrifices that will help them rebuild their infrastructure.

We have to help the American people grow their souls (which is not a noun but a verb) enough to recognize that since we, who are only 4 percent of the world’s population, have been consuming 25 percent of the planet’s resources, we are the ones who must take the first big steps to reduce greenhouse emissions.

We are the ones who must live more simply so that others can simply live.

[We] need to begin creating ways to live more frugally and cooperatively NOW because as times get harder, we “good Americans,” if we view ourselves only as victims, can easily slip into scapegoating the “other” and goose-stepping behind a nationalist leader, as the “good Germans” did in the 1930s, with Hitler...

 

“…This kind of transformation is what the next American revolution is about. It is not a single event but a process. It involves all of us, from many different walks of life, ethnicities, national origins, sexual orientations, faiths.… I see the Millennial generation playing a pivotal role. As Frantz Fanon put it in The Wretched of the Earth:

“‘Each generation, coming out of obscurity,

must define its mission and fulfill or betray it.’”

 

 

 

 

 

“The Next American Revolution” speech by Grace Lee Boggs, Left Forum Closing Plenary, Cooper Union, New York, March 16, 2008: http://www.boggscenter.org/; http://conversationsthatyouwillneverfinish.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/the-next-american-revolution/ Also “Making Change” on Against the Grain Tuesday July 15, 2008: http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/42/id/291446/tues-7-15-08-making-change.

Grace Lee Boggs is a prominent activist, community leader and author, Rhode Island born 1915 of Chinese immigrants, studied at Barnard College and Bryn Mawr and received her Ph.D. in 1940. “Her studies in philosophy and the writings of Marx, Hegel, and Mead led not to a life in academia teaching others to question themselves and those in power, but rather to a lifetime of social activism and collaboration with others.”

From the Chicago-based tenants’ rights to the 1941 March on Washington, Grace Lee “found her niche as an activist in the African-American community, focusing specifically on marginalized groups such as women and people of color.” In 1953 she married African American auto worker and activist James Boggs (d.1993) and moved to Detroit, Michigan. Today she continues her activism and writes columns for the Michigan Citizen.

“People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values” – Grace Lee Boggs -http://www.boggscenter.org.

_____________________________________

MORE THAN A MILLION DEAD; MORE THAN FOUR MILLION DISPLACED. Updated July 17, 2008: U.S. Deaths in U.S.-led Invasion and Occupation (accurate figures unknown): Just Foreign Policy:  http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html: Iraqi deaths due to U.S. Invasion: 1,236,604. Iraq/Afghanistan Casualties http://www.icasualties.org/oef/: U. S. deaths in Iraq 4,121 (all 4,435). U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan: 556 (all coalition fatalities: 891). [http://www.antiwar.com/casualties figures since March 19, 2003, Iraq: U.S. wounded 23,000-100,000; fatalities 4,121]. Iraq BodyCount Civilian deaths, reported from news wires, resulting from the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/: 85,966-93,778.

 

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6:45:00 PM EDT

 

 

 

Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney accepting

Green Party nomination, Green Party Convention, Chicago, Illinois July 12, 2008

speech excerpt www.runcynthiarun.org.

 

 

 

“…In 1851, in Akron, Ohio a former slave woman, abolitionist, and woman’s rights activist by the name of Sojourner Truth gave a speech now known as ‘Ain’t I a Woman.’ Sojourner Truth began her remarks, ‘Well children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter.’…

 

“As it was in 1851, so too it is in 2008. There is so much racket that we, too, know something is out of kilter. In 1851, the racket was about a woman’s right to vote.

 

“[And] … just a few years before Sojourner uttered those now famous words … suffragists met in Seneca Falls, New York and issued a declaration.… “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal…

 

“And just like the women and men at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 who declared their independence from the Old Order, I celebrated my birthday last year by doing something I had done a dozen times in my head, but had never done publicly:

 

I declared my independence from every bomb dropped, every threat leveled, every civil liberties rollback, every child killed, every veteran maimed, every man tortured, and the national leadership that let this happen.

 

At that pro-peace rally in front of the Pentagon, I noted that

 

·         [N]owhere on the Democratic Party’s Congressional Agenda for their first 100 days in the majority was any mention at all of a livable wage, the right of return for Katrina survivors, repealing the Patriot Acts, the Secret Evidence Act, the Military Commissions Act, or bringing our troops home now.

 

·         Nowhere on the Congressional Democrats’ agenda was an investigation into the Pentagon’s “loss” of $2.3 trillion that Rumsfeld admitted to just before September 11th.

 

·         And nowhere was there any plan to get that money back for jobs, health care, education, and for veterans.

 

·         Not even repeal of the Bush tax cuts that have helped to usher in, according to some, levels of income inequality not experienced in this country since the Great Depression.

 

·         [Instead] of Articles of Impeachment to hold the criminals accountable, impeachment was taken “off the table.”

 

 

“[Taking] … words directly from our own [U.S.] Declaration of Independence and from the [1848 Seneca Falls Convention] document “it is the right of those who suffer from itto refuse allegiance to it.”

 

“…[Today’s] reality is harsh: Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, lying, spying, war, stolen elections, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, New Orleans, poverty, racial profiling, Sean Bell, the San Francisco 8, Benton Harbor’s Reverend Pinkney, the Holy Land Foundation, 9/11/01. Embargo, blockade, friendly fire, depleted uranium, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, bunker busters, shock and awe. Predatory lending, mortgage crisis, foreclosures, a country $53 trillion in debt. And while Bear Stearns gets a bailout, you and I sink or swim.

 

“… Today’s reality is harsh. But what’s even harder for many to accept and admit is that our quality of life today is the making of the Democratic and Republican Parties. What our country has become through their public policy is reflective of their values.

 

“…We will never get a United States that is reflective ofdifferent values if we continue to do the same thing. Those who delivered us into this mess cannot be trusted to get us out of it.…

 

“…All over the world, Green Party members are working as elected leaders in government to make public policy reflect our Green values: Wangari Mathai, former Parliamentarian from Kenya, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate—Green Party member; Ingrid Betancourt, recently released hostage in Colombia, former Senator and Presidential candidate—Green Party member. Green Party members make public policy at the national level on every Continent—but not yet in our country.

 

“…Voters in this country are scared into not voting their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations. But in Bolivia and Ecuador and Argentina and Chile and Nicaragua and Spain, and India and Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti, voters were not afraid to vote their hopes and dreams and guess, what. Their dreams came true. Ours can, too.

 

“…Vote your dreams, Vote your conscience. Vote our future. Vote Green.…”

 

www.runcynthiarun.org.

“McKinney’s acceptance speech” July 13, 2008: Austin Cassidy’s Independent Political Report http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/07/mckinneys-acceptance-speech/

http://www.runcynthiarun.org/

 

Former Congresswoman Cynthia Ann McKinney was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (her district Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia) January 3, 1993-January 3, 2003 and January 3, 2005-January 3, 2007. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California-Los Angeles and studied at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy-Medford, Mass. She was diplomatic fellow at Spellman College-Atlanta, Ga., a member of the faculty of Clark Atlanta University and Agnes Scott College-Atlanta, and a member of the State of Georgia House of Representatives (1988-1992). Her birth date is March 17, 1955.

Source:  http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=m000523.

 

See also Cynthia Ann McKinney (Green Party candidate for U.S.President), Rosa Alicia Clemente (Green Party candidate for Vice Presiden) bios at htp://www.votetruth08.com/index.php/learn/meet-the-candidates/. Candidates also in July 21, 2008, interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman : www.democracynow.org.

 

 

“We are in this to build a movement.

We are willing to struggle for as long as it takes

To have our values prevail in public policy.

A vote for the Green Party is a vote for the movement

That will turn this countryright side up again.”

 

http://votetruth08.com

 

Tags: candidates for U.S. presidency 2008, Georgia U.S. Representative, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Green Party, Sojourner Truth, Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention, alternative to Democratic and Republican parties

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12:13:15 PM EDT

 

 

Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution (ratified effective December 15, 1791)

Amendment IV: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Senate action Wednesday July 9, 2008: “A bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence and for other purposes” http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00168#top

 

YEAS FAILING TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Alabama:	Sessions (R-AL), Not Voting	Shelby (R-AL), Yea
Alaska:	Murkowski (R-AK), Yea	Stevens (R-AK), Yea
Arizona:	Kyl (R-AZ), Yea	McCain (R-AZ), Not Voting
Arkansas:	Lincoln (D-AR), Yea	Pryor (D-AR), Yea
California:	Boxer (D-CA), Nay	Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Colorado:	Allard (R-CO), Yea	Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Connecticut:	Dodd (D-CT), Nay	Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Delaware:	Biden (D-DE), Nay	Carper (D-DE), Yea
Florida:	Martinez (R-FL), Yea	Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Georgia:	Chambliss (R-GA), Yea	Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Hawaii:	Akaka (D-HI), Nay	Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Idaho:	Craig (R-ID), Yea	Crapo (R-ID), Yea
Illinois:	Durbin (D-IL), Nay	Obama (D-IL), Yea
Indiana:	Bayh (D-IN), Yea	Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Iowa:	Grassley (R-IA), Yea	Harkin (D-IA), Nay
Kansas:	Brownback (R-KS), Yea	Roberts (R-KS), Yea
Kentucky:	Bunning (R-KY), Yea	McConnell (R-KY), Yea
Louisiana:	Landrieu (D-LA), Yea	Vitter (R-LA), Yea
Maine:	Collins (R-ME), Yea	Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Maryland:	Cardin (D-MD), Nay	Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Massachusetts:	Kennedy (D-MA), Not Voting	Kerry (D-MA), Nay
Michigan:	Levin (D-MI), Nay	Stabenow (D-MI), Nay
Minnesota:	Coleman (R-MN), Yea	Klobuchar (D-MN), Nay
Mississippi:	Cochran (R-MS), Yea	Wicker (R-MS), Yea
Missouri:	Bond (R-MO), Yea	McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
Montana:	Baucus (D-MT), Yea	Tester (D-MT), Nay
Nebraska:	Hagel (R-NE), Yea	Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Nevada:	Ensign (R-NV), Yea	Reid (D-NV), Nay
New Hampshire:	Gregg (R-NH), Yea	Sununu (R-NH), Yea
New Jersey:	Lautenberg (D-NJ), Nay	Menendez (D-NJ), Nay
New Mexico:	Bingaman (D-NM), Nay	Domenici (R-NM), Yea
New York:	Clinton (D-NY), Nay	Schumer (D-NY), Nay
North Carolina:	Burr (R-NC), Yea	Dole (R-NC), Yea
North Dakota:	Conrad (D-ND), Yea	Dorgan (D-ND), Nay
Ohio:	Brown (D-OH), Nay	Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Oklahoma:	Coburn (R-OK), Yea	Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
Oregon:	Smith (R-OR), Yea	Wyden (D-OR), Nay
Pennsylvania:	Casey (D-PA), Yea	Specter (R-PA), Yea
Rhode Island:	Reed (D-RI), Nay	Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
South Carolina:	DeMint (R-SC), Yea	Graham (R-SC), Yea
South Dakota:	Johnson (D-SD), Yea	Thune (R-SD), Yea
Tennessee:	Alexander (R-TN), Yea	Corker (R-TN), Yea
Texas:	Cornyn (R-TX), Yea	Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Utah:	Bennett (R-UT), Yea	Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Vermont:	Leahy (D-VT), Nay	Sanders (I-VT), Nay
Virginia:	Warner (R-VA), Yea	Webb (D-VA), Yea
Washington:	Cantwell (D-WA), Nay	Murray (D-WA), Nay
West Virginia:	Byrd (D-WV), Nay	Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Wisconsin:	Feingold (D-WI), Nay	Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Wyoming:	Barrasso (R-WY), Yea	Enzi (R-WY), Yea

 

Quote-unquote

 

“The question is where the impetus for change will come from, because poor people are virtually invisible to the U.S. Senate. ... [Senators] are disproportionately wealthy and represent, economically, only a narrow slice of the population. This, combined with the fact that the constituents that they see as most relevant, those in the best position to affect their tenures in office, are also disproportionately wealthy, leads to a serious imbalance of power. Too few people have too much wealth, power, and access, and too many people have too little.” - The Conscience of a Liberal: Reclaiming the compassionate agenda - Senator Paul Wellstone (b. 1944 - d. 2002).

Tags: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA], U.S. constitutional breach, U.S. Senate cowed and compromised, imperial presidency, U.S. Senate votes

Tags: Amendment IV, Bill of Rights, U.S. Constitution, Paul Wellstone on the U.S. Senate

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1:57:14 PM EDT

Washington’s Empire against Iran

New Yorker/Hersh report excerpt

 

“Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. …

 

"…A Democratic senator told me [Seymour Hersh] that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America. …

 

…  “The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, [was] ‘pushing back very hard’ against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me [Hersh] . … The most outspoken of [a group of senior] officers is Admiral William Fallon, [formerly] … head of U.S. Central Command and … in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran.…”

  

  

Washington’s Empire against Afghanistan

UN report excerpt

 

“The humanitarian situation inside Afghanistan is getting worse, with civilian casualties rising and food prices soaring…

“… Figures released by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) indicate that there have been 698 civilian casualties so far this year, compared to 430 for the same period in 2007.

“… Nearly two-thirds of the killings this year have been the result of insurgents and other anti-Government groups, with the rest attributable to either the military or international forces.

“… [The] plight of vast numbers of refugees returning from neighboring Iran and Pakistan and finding it difficult to re-settle in their homeland, must not be neglected.…”

 

 

 

 Sources:

 “Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran” Seymour M. Hersh in Annals of National Security July 7, 2008 issue of The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/30/hersh_congress_agreed_to_bush_request

 

 

Afghan situation worsening, UN relief chief says, urging new approach UN June 29, 2008:

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=27206&Cr=Afghanistan&Cr1=humanitarian#

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/6/30/headlines

 

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6:34:26 PM EDT

 

 

 

Britain’s Empire in Africa

 

Western colonialism extending from about 1500 was a political-economic phenomenon whereby various European nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world.…

 

In 1661 the British began permanent settlements on the African continent though slave trading had begun earlier in Sierra Leone (West Africa). In 1787 the West African region became a British possession. In 1806 Britain acquired the Cape of Good Hope (now in South Africa) and Boer and British pioneers under British control opened up South Africa’s interior.

 

The 19th-century saw the greatest extension of British power (incursion, invasion, oppression) in Africa. From 1882 Britain was “the acknowledged ruling force” in Egypt and from 1899 the Sudan. Britain possessed Nigeria, the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Gambia in the middle 19th century. Economically through the Imperial British East Africa Company Britain owned what is now Kenya and Uganda; through the British South Africa Company Britain owned what are now Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia), Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) and Malawi.

 

In the second half of the century, the Royal Niger Company began to extend British influence in Nigeria, and the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and The Gambia also became British possessions. The Imperial British East Africa Company operated in what are now Kenya and Uganda, and the British South Africa Company operated in what are now Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia),Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia), and Malaŵi. 

 

Britain’s takeover of Africa coalescing in the 1910 Union of South Africa resulted in a chain of British territories stretching from South Africa northward to Egypt, an African empire extending ‘from the Cape to Cairo’ and by century's end the British Empire had a stranglehold on “nearly one-quarter of the world's land surface and more than one-quarter of its total population.”

 

United States’ Empire in Africa

IN the 20th and 21st centuries “the United States has … developed into the principal military partner of most African countries, displacing ex-colonial powers.” U. S.  Military has relocated (from Cold War-era Asia and Europe) into Africa and the Middle East to ‘fight terrorism’ and ‘protect oil’ resources. “Flexible bases” have arrived in Uganda, Djibouti, Senegal and São Tomé and Príncipe; and more permanent bases have arrived or are planned for “oil producers such as Gabon and Mauritania [and] less significant resource owners such as Guinea Conakry and Rwanda.”

 

United States’ Empire in Middle East

Palestine under the foot of Western nations’-created Israel is barred from rising to self sufficiency. Millions of people in Iraq have been killed and forced into homelessness, statelessness, interminable migration then subjected to hostilities when and if they land on shores of Western countries. Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and other states are constantly under threat by super nuclear-powered Washington whim.  

 

Britain/United States’ feigned shock but approved Tyrants:

Myanmar, Pakistan, China and others

 

The military government for years has been oppressing, starving the people of Burma/Myanmar and imprisoning a Nobel Peace laureate because her side won the election. Under U.S-ally Pakistan and its military officer /president Pervez Musharraf who seized power in a 1999 coup d’état the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, was murdered campaigning on the street. In China the government murders and otherwise puts down all protesters and dissent, violates Universal Human rights with impunity. Western countries keep arming them, recycling their currency, buying their products and services. Where is the credibility, the believability?

 

And the Western powers are hypocritically and with convenient amnesia all over mass marketed news programs. The U.S. State Department says recent elections in Zimbabwe (Southern Africa) are “a sham.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and UN Security Council members and G8 members call the election “illegitimate.” A man who should know better, South Africa’s Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu, together with politicians in Britain calls for deploying the big guns: strangling sanctions, direct military (euphemistically called peacekeeping) force on Zimbabwe.

 

 

Where’s the sham here?  Who are the illegitimates?

 

When a nation—any nation—whether Africa or the United States of America or an institution, such as the United Nations, is stripped of (or barred from developing) its lawful and peaceful mechanisms and institutions, its character, it can’t help but self-destruct—lose all legitimacy. No matter what lies it tells to itself.

 

In the United States of America, held up by liars and deniers as the model of “good” democracy, government officials in all branches of government directly or indirectly are on the payrolls of private corporations. Together government and corporations cycle and recycle money and power and influence among themselves and for their own narrow interests. In maintaining this Exclusive Club they flout the rule of law, violate human rights, destroy the social (world and domestic) contract and breakdown all legitimacy of government and institutions of, for and by The People.  

 

The United States government and its corporate allies are destroying the United States of America, its heart, its character, its believability. This same Tyrant in Washington is ruining, jeopardizing the legitimacy of, the United Nations.

 

 

United States’ Empire at the UN

 

At the start of Washington’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, former UK Cabinet Minister Clare Short spoke about the United States and its treatment of the United Nations.

 

“The current administration,” she said “has shown its disrespect for the UN throughout the Iraq crisis. … But the same attitudes were present during the Clinton administration which refused to pay its dues to the UN, to sign the Kyoto Agreement, accept the authority of the International Criminal Court or even to support the Convention on the Rights of the Child. …

 

“It isn't that the U.S. does not operate in the UN system. It finds [the UN] usefulwhen it is ready to do America’s bid