RT Anchor: If Missile Was Russian, It Shows Why Governments Shouldn’t Give Weapons To Militias

Posted on July 22, 2014 by abby

AbbyMartin TALKING POINTS MEMO – An anchor on the Russian-funded network RT America took to the airwaves on Friday to say that if a Russian-backed rebel militia brought down the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine, it shows why governments should not be providing weapons to insurgent forces.

“If an international independent investigation does indeed find that the missile was shot by rebel fighters, then the criminals responsible need to be held accountable,” said Abby Martin, host of “Breaking the Set.”

Russia has denied having anything to do with the attack.

“Russia has been logistically backing the rebels in this territory,” she noted, adding “if an investigation finds that this missile was indeed Russian, then it exemplifies exactly why state power should not be providing high-grade weaponry to militias.”

This was not the first time Martin had taken a critical line against the Russian government. In March she denounced Russia’s invasion of Crimea, stating that she would prefer to risk her job and “go down on the right side of history” than remain silent.

Martin’s comments come on the heels of international speculation over those responsible for a reported surface-to-air missile that shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.

While there have been no formal accusations from the U.S. or Malaysia that the Russian-backed separatists are responsible for shooting down the plane, President Obama has called for a ceasefire and urged an immediate international investigation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, after openly blaming the Ukrainian government for the circumstances of the attack, has echoed the calls for a ceasefire.

Watch the video of the segment of below:

Abby Martin’s Statement on Downed Malaysian Plane & State Sponsorship of Militias

More at Talking Points Memo.

An “Efficient” Assault: US-Israeli War Crimes in Gaza

Posted on July 13, 2014 by xavier best

gazaflickrJoseMesa The humanitarian catastrophe resulting from Israel’s latest killing spree in Gaza should weigh heavily on the conscience of US citizens, given that Israel remains the largest recipient of US foreign aid, to the tune of 3 billion dollars a year.

According to Reuters, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has now dropped bombs on over 1,000 targets across what has been deemed the world’s largest open-air prison. Scenes of extreme suffering and loss abound, like that in the town of Khan Younis, where a house filled with civilians was bombed, or the missile that leveled Gaza’s police headquarters, killing 18 members of one family.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) observed “Israeli warplanes launched 39 airstrikes targeting houses, agricultural plots, open areas, a charity and a bank in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis.” Furthermore, “Israeli tanks and gunboats … fired dozens of shells at agricultural and open areas,” killing “9 Palestinian civilians, including 2 women …” PCHR also documents that 149 houses in Gaza have been “targeted and destroyed.”

These outbursts of state terror are so periodic and unceasing, it’s difficult to express the gravity of the situation. Much like the previous large-scale Israeli military assault on Gaza in 2012 called ‘Operation Pillar of Defense’, ‘Operation Protective Edge’ has unleashed horrifying levels of violence against Palestinian civilians. Doctors on the ground are now reporting that Israel is using weapons against Gazans which have been banned under international law, “[causing] major damage to [their] bodies, especially the limbs.” Responding to this gruesome development, Palestinian Health Ministry Undersecretary Youssef Abo al-Rish condemned “Israel’s use of internationally banned weapons” as “a blatant violation of human rights and international agreements.”

Compounded with the devastating human toll this savagery has spawned is a media narrative that all but ensures it will continue. Both television and print media repeatedly cast Israel as merely “defending itself” or “retaliating” against Hamas rockets. Writing in the Boston Globe, Chairman of the Anti Defamation League Jeff Robbins notes “Those who have been fortunate enough not to have endured rockets aimed at their homes can be counted upon to issue the familiar incantations about Israeli ‘collective punishment,’ dodging as always the question of what, precisely, Israel is supposed to do about attacks against its civilians if not to try to prevent them.”

Ignored in this callous dismissal of Israeli war crimes is the fact that the people of Gaza are under a foreign military occupation in violation of international humanitarian law and multiple UN Security Council Resolutions. That this brutal occupation may be the source of the rocketing is untouched in the corporate press. Instead, American audiences are presented with a de-contextualized narrative of a cycle of violence from both sides, accompanied, almost invariably, by vague and insincere demands for a de-escalation of the conflict.

If the vast disparity in firepower between Hamas and the IDF doesn’t illustrate the specious framing, then the death toll certainly does. Since the beginning of Israel’s assault, 170 Palestinians have been killed and over 1,120 have been injured according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Based on figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “70 percent of Gaza fatalities are civilians,” and of that number, “30 percent are children.” Conversely, zero Israelis have been killed. Nonetheless, the western authors of this mass slaughter are unrestrained in their exuberance, foremost the “leader of the free world.”

In his July 8 Op-Ed in Haaretz, President Obama celebrated the growing “security relationship” between the US and Israel, a bond that is “stronger than ever.” Perhaps the “strength” of this bond can be measured in the overwhelming silence and distortion that has greeted this latest chapter in the Palestinian people’s long record of national humiliation. So when ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer misidentifies Palestinian civilians devastated by IAF airstrikes as Israelis, a simple one minute apology to American viewers (not to the people of Gaza) suffices.

Any deeper investigation into the dominant narratives of Palestinian villainy that have long characterized US media discourse is forbidden. For example, the New York Times will issue no apology for featuring a front page photograph of a masked Palestinian slinging a stone alongside an article about the brutal lynching of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khadeir. Unlike Sawyer’s “mistake”, misrepresentations of this kind are the norm, and therefore merit no apologies. These images are illustrative of Palestinian menace or an ominous “demographic problem” pensively waiting to destroy an Israeli state–an island of civilization in a “tough neighborhood”–“forced to take action to protect its civilians.” Rhetoric of this kind is highly reminiscent of the US genocide against North America’s indigenous population, which was carried out to “protect” the European colonists from the “terror” of “merciless Indian savages,” as Thomas Jefferson described them in one of his lesser known contributions to “enlightenment” philosophy.

Incidentally, the traditional imperial pretext of “protecting civilians” has been stretched to surreal dimensions under the current offensive. Among the “military” targets selected in this campaign to “protect” Israelis are beach-side cafes, mosques, and rehabilitation centers. The New York Times headlined the attack on the beach-side cafe as follows: Missile at Beachside Gaza Cafe Finds Patrons Poised for World Cup (my emphasis). It would be instructive to observe the response within the US if the terrorist attack against innocent civilians at the Boston Marathon was headlined Exploding Pressure Cooker Finds Athletes Poised for Boston Marathon. Needless to say, more than a simple “correction” would be demanded.

Underlying these socially sanctioned exhibitions of dehumanization is a doctrine of state violence which was articulated most powerfully by Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. In a shockingly unambiguous entry in his Independence War Diary he noted “Blowing up a house is not enough. What is necessary is cruel and strong reactions. We need precision in time, place and casualties. If we know the family–[we must] strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action there is no need to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.” Under ‘Operation Protective Edge’, the Israeli military has adhered to this pernicious doctrine with a frightening degree of discipline.

Overshadowing this record of atrocities is the inescapable fact that the United States is complicit in the killing of every innocent Palestinian under Israeli occupation, a reality systematically omitted from conventional narratives. A particularly dramatic illustration of this norm could be perceived in a recent State Dept. press conference. After establishing the dogma that Palestinians had no “right to defend themselves”, State Dept. spokesperson Jen Psaki was asked what Washington would do to pressure Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to “rein in” Hamas.

Since Hamas and the PA formed a “unity government”, the journalist protested, Abbas certainly shared “responsibility” for the Hamas rocketing into Israel. Another question could have easily been asked, namely what was the Obama administration going to do to “rein in” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Critical inquiry of this kind is inconceivable in US establishment journalistic circles. Consequently, the leader of the “only democracy in the Middle East” (typical language in imperial societies that lack self-reflection, the US being a dramatic example) can launch missiles at unprotected civilian structures–murdering the elderly, women, and children–and the best headline Human Rights Watch can produce to capture the tragedy is Palestine/Israel: Indiscriminate Palestinian Rocket Attacks. On the IAF airstrikes on houses? They “appear to be” collective punishment.

At a recent Palestine solidarity rally, author and activist Max Blumenthal proclaimed “This is not a conflict. It is a conquest. It is an illegal conquest.” Beyond the highly misleading, and often racist, commentary that prevails in the establishment press, this is arguably the most succinct description of Israel’s ongoing war against Palestinians. Much like the global conquerors in Washington, the regional conquerors in the Israeli government interpret any expression of autonomy by those over whom they rule as not only threatening but criminal. It is through this perverse logic that the systematic subjugation of an entire people is made to look virtuous or, to borrow Benjamin Netanyahu’s words in reference to its threats against Iran, “those in the international community … don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” Throughout history, all oppressive states have imbibed this psychotic worldview, some in more lethal doses than others. One shudders at the thought of future servants of empire retelling this chronology of suffering and the monstrosities they will inevitably conceal in the name of “freedom”.

Written by Xavier Best @Xav711

Photo by flickr user Jose Mesa

Source: Chomsky, Noam. The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians. Boston, MA: South End, 1983. Print.

Celebrations of Imperialist War Abound

Posted on July 3, 2014 by abby

Summer is here and the stench of war is all around. Or, as Bob Marley put it, ‘everywhere is war’.

Start with the commemorations over a five-week span of Memorial Day, Flag Day and Independence Day, all presented varyingly as celebrations of our war dead, symbols of our greatness, the freedoms we love so dearly and seek to export to every corner of the world and, perhaps most important, the unquestioned rightness of our cause.

In reality, the celebrations are of imperialist war, with the talk about the hallowed dead just so much cover for the murderous nature of US foreign policy. Celebrating the dead – note that the dead celebrated are just the American dead, not any of the millions killed by US aggression or client states – is a no-lose proposition designed to render anyone who asks the wrong questions a traitor or a terrorist. The notion that the US regularly commits war crimes and that polished, well-educated men like Barack Obama are war criminals is unthinkable; war criminals look like Osama bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein and those other nasty people far away, over there.

It’s also the summer of the centennial of the start of what in its time was known as the Great War, the greatest blood-letting in history except for that of the Second Great War barely two decades later. One thing we can be sure is that the lessons drawn from mainstream discussions of World War I will be all the wrong ones. Worse, the spectacle of the intelligentsia waxing eloquent about the horrors of war while unflinchingly cheering on the warmakers in Washington will be accepted by one and all of their kind as perfectly reasonable – as beyond discussion, in fact.

In recent weeks, meanwhile, mainstream commentators have been shocked to discover that things in Iraq are not alright, in fact are worse than at any time since the second US blitzkrieg in 2003. Gee, who knew that an invasion predicated on a lie of weapons of mass destruction, designed to secure control of massive oil supplies, would go wrong? The political class and intelligentsia pretended they didn’t, but millions around the world who demonstrated against the invasion in the weeks before it was launched certainly did. And one of the points those demonstrators underscored was that a US invasion would fuel sectarian divisions and violence, precisely as has happened. Al-Qaeda, which did not exist in Iraq prior to the invasion, now flourishes while a new group, the Islamist State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), rampages through the country.

The response of many elites in the US, naturally, is for more war. Calls from certain factions for a third US invasion are growing louder and Obama likely would have done so by now if not for grave ruling class concerns about how much more a war-weary populace can endure. Weary or not, people in the US came together in a remarkable groundswell of protest last summer that prevented Obama from attacking Syria. Given Obama’s penchant for resolving virtually any problem with violence, however, as in his determination to provoke war with Russia in Ukraine, his reluctance to invade Iraq may be temporary.

Also on the war front is the Veterans Affairs’ disgraceful neglect of ex-soldiers in need of medical care. For years, political elites have been slashing benefits for veterans while increasing spending on weapons and cutting taxes for the Super Rich. That the problem came to a head with a Democrat in the White House is simply an accident of timing, and it is especially outrageous that the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of the illegal Bush-Cheney invasions, as well as reductions to the VA’s budgets and the tax cuts for 1%, now pretend that they care about soldiers.

Equally farcical is the commencement of yet another round of hearings on the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Such hearings would certainly be valuable if everything related to US actions in Libya since the launch of the 2011 assault were up for review, but there is virtually no chance of that happening. The deaths of tens of thousands of Libyans in yet one more illegal military strike, as well as the resulting chaos and violence in that country, is of no concern to those who long for the good old days of Bush-Cheney interested only in scoring political points.

Last but not least is the saga of the much-vilified Bowe Bergdhal, a young man who came to see the criminal nature of the US invasion of Afghanistan. The refusal of working class youth to fight for Empire is the ruling class’s biggest nightmare and the attacks on Bergdahl, like the show trial that convicted Chelsea Manning, exemplify how far they will go to punish those in uniform who dare challenge their objectives. A hidden aspect of the movement that ended US carnage in Southeast Asia is that it was the widespread opposition of soldiers, both as embodied by organizations like Vietnam Veterans Against the War as well as active duty resisters, that decisively turned the tide.

This development was so alarming that two massive disinformation campaigns were immediately launched: the myth of the hostility of the anti-war movement for returning soldiers that sought to drive a wedge between active duty and homefront resistance (see Jerry Lembcke’s The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam); and the completely fraudulent MIA blitz (expertly exposed by Bruce Franklin in MIA, or Mythmaking in America) concocted by the Nixon Administration to shift attention away from the death and destruction wrought by the US to the plight of nonexistent prisoners of war.

Because preventing any similar resistance among soldiers is central to imperial objectives, discussion has largely avoided what Bergdahl actually said about his service in Afghanistan, including his telling declaration in a 2009 e-mail to his parents: “The future is too good to waste on lies and life is way too short to care for the damnation of others as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I’ve seen their ideas, I’m ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self righteous arrogance that they thrive in.” Rather than joining in the Bowe Bergdhal lynch mob, US soldiers everywhere, not to mention those with loved ones in the military, would do well to heed his words and experience.

Lastly, the same standard that applies to the war crimes of others applies to the US. As articulated by Robert H. Jackson, chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg, a war of aggression such as committed by the US against Afghanistan and Iraq “is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from all other crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” In such a circumstance, what Bergdahl did was proper and, it could be argued, obligatory for anyone party to war crimes.

So amidst the holiday flag waving and speeches that glorify imperialism, we should support prisoners of conscience like Chelsea Manning. We should demand that all services veterans require be provided, that US bases around the world be closed, that soldiers be returned home and that the US cease its campaign of endless aggression. And as enticing as the military may seem in such desperate economic times, we should counsel young people to stay away no matter how bleak the alternatives may be.

Written by Andy Piascik at [email protected]

Photo by flickr user Kevin Dooley

What If Edward Snowden Leaked All the Documents?

Posted on June 26, 2014 by abby

In the few public interviews given by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, he’s hinted at having access to documents that include CIA outpost locations and secret agents’ names. Yet Snowden has also outlined the agreement he made with journalists to vet the documents carefully, and consult with the government before every release to ensure no harm to national security.

Russ Tice, the first post-9/11 NSA whistleblower said that he would have ‘shot Snowden’ himself if he had leaked juicier documents Tice refers to as ‘the jewels’, presumably in reaction to the potential dangers posed by what’s considered legitimate spying, black-ops programs and/or by exposing the people who secretly work within the intelligence sector.

Interested in how other NSA whistleblowers feel about this potential scenario, Media Roots posed the question to former AT&T technician turned NSA whistleblower Mark Klein in an exclusive radio interview.

Media Roots: What would be your opinion of Snowden if he leaked everything that he had without any regard for protecting intelligence assets names?

Mark Klein: I would say well, he did a heroic thing and it’s better the world knows the crimes that the government’s committing. Frankly a lot of the people who might get exposed, whose lives might be in danger, probably are bad people anyways. I’m from the 70s, my hero in the 70s was Philip Agee who exposed a whole list of names of CIA agents all over the world, because he figured rightly that the CIA was a dangerous, evil organization whose main task was to assassinate people, and he was right. I don’t give a shit what happens to the CIA, I hope this organization is dismantled and destroyed, it’s dedicated to assassination, that’s what it’s always done.

Klein’s blistering critique against the US intelligence apparatus differs greatly from statements made by any other NSA whistleblower. As a private sector employee, he never held any allegiance to the US government, nor signed any secrecy oath in contrast to other former NSA employees like Bill Binney, Thomas Drake, Kirk Wiebe, and Russ Tice.

The typical template framing how Snowden’s leaks could have or did put American service members lives at risk is always met with adamant denial from those involved, especially Glenn Greenwald (with Shepard Smith and Bill Maher) and even Snowden himself. Understandably, when facing potential espionage charges, the exaggerated construct of harm devised by National Security state apologists has to be countered with a measured response by people in positions like Greenwald.

Though hypothetically speaking, if Snowden had leaked information like this, do secret CIA agents even deserve protection? Does an unabashed assassination and torture agency sponsoring an illegal arms trade and funded by our tax dollars really deserve a cloak of secrecy any longer?

Instead of shying away from the potentially false premise that lives might be in danger from the ongoing leaks, why are journalists not confronting it with a similar line to what war-criminal-walking-free Dick Cheney said about the public outrage regarding the Iraq war?

“So?”

Written by Robbie Martin of Media Roots, @fluorescentgrey on twitter

Photo from the EFF

Glenn Greenwald’s Chutzpah

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Robbie

QC5wydy Glenn Greenwald was asked all-too-familiar stock questions on mainstream programs like Meet the Press and Charlie Rose during his book tour for No Place to Hide. Although he was put on the defense in almost every segment, Greenwald held firm and consistent when combating the adversarial tone of US establishment journalists.

Over the course of his high profile interviews, many may have missed his lengthier and more candid talks in Hamburg, Amsterdam and at Harvard. Here’s some of our favorite quotes from those lectures that you probably won’t hear on the corporate media.

Obama’s NSA Lies

“I think [Obama is] due a lot of credit because it really is impressive that he’s able to say those things with a straight face and not bursting out in laughter, I find that skill really really extraordinary, and he’s very good at it and I think we ought to acknowledge it in fairness.”

CIA Assesses Senator Obama

“The greatest hope for saving America’s war fighting ability and to stem the tide of anti-war sentiment in Europe was for then-Senator Barack Obama to become president, because what that would do is transform these wars from George Bush’s face, which the world had grown increasingly tired of and had been viewed as this kind of swagger and unilateral cowboy that was particularly hated in Europe, into this kind, sophisticated, progressive face of Barack Obama.”

“And by making Obama the face of these wars it would transform all this anti-war sentiment into people who were willing to acquiesce to the war if not outright support it. [The CIA] knew that he would continue all of these policies, but his branding was so pleasant and especially in Western Europe, so beloved that it would be an immense asset for the National Security State.”

Obama’s European Branding Power

“There’s so much rhetoric about the US government, [and Obama is] an effective salesmen around the world for this myth of American greatness. I think one of the principal things that this debate over the last year has done is open people’s eyes about the reality of president Obama vs. the image.”

Global Obama Tarnishing

“I live in Brazil where he had been beloved and across every Brazilian newspaper is very menacing pictures of him connecting him with spying.”

The Democrats

“We have been criticized very predictably and very inconsequentially from what I will call for just lack of a better term: ‘the Right’, which is, you know, primarily Democrats who voice this critique that our disclosures are going to help the terrorists and result in the deaths of innocent people and all of that. I was on CSPAN two days ago, and every time the host said ‘And now we’re going to go to the Democrat line’ I knew I was about to be called a traitor. It was completely reliable.”

Snowden = Russian False Flag

“Those very same people who had been saying just two weeks earlier that [Snowden] was clearly a Chinese spy suddenly switched on a dime saying obviously this is an operation by Vladimir Putin.”

“It’s really remarkable how seriously all of that has been taken despite the fact that there’s zero evidence to support any of it and mountains of evidence to negate it.”

Russia is Scary

“There is this amazing dynamic in American political discourse which is that certain words drive Americans instantly into hysteria and irrationality. One of them is terrorism, the minute you say that everybody screams and jumps under the bed, not quite as much as they did before but still.”

“The much scarier word for people is Russia, this is a word that if you really want to scare an American and make them go away just whisper Russia in their ear and they’ll start running down the street.”

“On television every interviewer would say to me ‘well what about Edward Snowden he must be completely miserable, i mean he’s in Russia‘ I guess they assume that all 160 million people who live in Russia are instantly and automatically miserable from the time of their birth until they die like it’s just one big gulag.”

The Role of Journalism

“The Washington Post, New York Times and other media outlets have been more aggressive because they would have been shamed if they hadn’t been.”

Passion in Journalism

“I think it’s much more powerful as a journalist to be honest about the way you see the world and the assumptions that you’re making than it is to try and deceive your readers into pretending that you float above opinion. I think that passion and vibrancy and soul are necessary for good journalism, the attempt to drain all that out of it has made journalism not just weak but boring and sort of neutered.”

Coordinated Scripts

“I’ve been pretty scornful of the notion that there is this active plotting among journalists and media outlets to coordinate their storyline.”

“Within 24 to 48 hours literally after we first introduced Snowden to the world, there was this immediate consensus among all these media elites that they were completely capable of taking this person that they had never heard of before and didn’t know the first thing about and were diagnosing him, like clinically diagnosing him, psychologically assessing all of his pathologies. They all settled on this coordinated script that he was a ‘fame seeking narcissist’ If you Google it you will find this phrase over and over again.”

“Where did that come from, that ‘fame seeking narcissist’ thing, I really want to know.”

Pretend Respect

“There’s all these unwritten rules that govern the ways journalists are supposed to behave.”

“You’re not supposed to be too aggressive in condemning the government, you’re supposed to pretend to have respect for their fearmongering claims about why you shouldn’t be publishing.”

Exploiting Sexual Vulnerabilities

“I never used to be able to understand why in response to the leaking of the Pentagon papers the response of the Nixon administration was to break into the office of his [Daniel Ellsberg’s] psychiatrist in the hope of obtaining his psycho-sexual secrets. It never made any sense to me. It seemed like the ultimate non sequitur, ‘Oh look we have documents showing that the US government has been systematically lying to us for years about the Vietnam war’ and the response would be ‘well Daniel Ellsberg is a swinger’.”

“It’s an incredibly effective means of excluding somebody from decent company, and making everything they say instantly dismissed for that reason.”

Privacy/Encryption

“There are chat programs such as Pidgin and OTR that provide relatively good protection, there’s the TOR browser that lets you use the internet anonymously, the Tails operating system.”

“The problem is all these names are pretty daunting to people who haven’t heard them before…I think the tech community needs to develop these tools to make them much more friendly…Once that happens and that will happen, encryption will become the default means of how people communicate on the internet.”

Email Privacy

“I do use PGP email, and in part I use it because I happen to have read a lot of NSA documents talking about how frustrated they are at their inability to invade it.”

“If you use PGP email, the NSA actually looks for the people who are using encryption, because in their twisted minds, your desire to shield our communications from their prying eyes is evidence that you are suspicious.”

Laura Poitras’ Snowden Film

“Amazingly [Laura Poitras] filmed virtually everything that took place in Hong Kong, our interaction with Snowden, all of the conversations we had, which is going to be in a documentary she releases in the Fall.”

Check out Greenwald’s lengthiest and best public appearances so far in May 2014: