5 November 2017. Dr Jill on the “War on Terror”

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Outrageous: the disastrous, counterproductive “War on Terror” has cost the USA 250 million USD (14.77 billion Roubles. 1.66 billion Renminbi. 16.18 billion INR. 319.16 million CAD. 326.8 million AUD. 215.16 million Euros. 191.15 million UK Pounds) per day for the last 16 years as communities across America crumbled.

Jill Stein

People Across the USA Protest on Guantánamo Gulag’s 12th Anniversary, Demand Its Closure

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On Saturday, Americans took to the streets across the country to demand the closure of the Guantánamo prison, on the 12th anniversary of the notorious American-run prison’s opening. Exactly 12 years ago, on 11 January 2002, the USA airlifted the first prisoners into the prison complex at US Naval Station Guantánamo Bay in Cuba following then-US President George W Bush‘s 13 November 2001 executive order authorising the prison’s establishment to detain American-captured “terror suspects”. Out of 779 prisoners ever held at the camp, courts only convicted and sentenced seven of them. According to The Guardian, those charged and convicted of a war crime were lucky, as they might get out of Guantánamo, whilst most of the prisoners held there without charges could spend the rest of their lives in prison.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, US President Obama promised to close the prison as he acknowledged that the detention camp was a symbol of the US government‘s violation of human rights. Today, twelve years after the opening of the prison and almost five years after Obama promised to close it, Americans all across the country took to the streets to demand the shutting down of the prison. Protests occurred at the White House in Washington DC, and in a number of other American cities including Miami FL, Santa Monica CA, and Chicago IL.

In early February last year, Gitmo prisoners began a hunger strike to protest harsh conditions and indefinite detention without trial. The mass protest peaked in July as over 130 prisoners took part in the hunger strike. Images from the detention centre published in June showed how military guards force-fed prisoners, strapping them into a metal restraint chair, feeding them through plastic tubing forced up their noses. In December, the DoD said that it would no longer release reports of hunger strikes staged at the prison to the public since disclosing such news wouldn’t be in American interests.

 11 January 2014

Voice of Russia World Service

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_11/People-protest-across-US-on-Guantanamos-12th-anniversary-demand-prisons-closure-9030/

Editor’s Note:

President Obama couldn’t close the Gitmo Gulag because Republicans in the US Senate used obstructionist tactics, using abuse of parliamentary procedure to bollix up the Prez. That means something, kids… it means that Republicans are ungovernable brats at heart, which means that they’re criminal in their very souls. They advocate a “deregulated” anarchic “libertarian” society where the rich run roughshod over all others, and they advocate a foreign policy of lawlessly arresting people in foreign parts, kidnapping them by force, and taking them to the USA for trial by kangaroo courts. That’s not right… US law has no force outside the borders of the USA… that is, it has no jurisdiction; you can’t apply it to actions that took place outside the USA. That makes such trials criminal farces… far worse than any Soviet troika (and here) or Freisler’s Volksgerichthof… at least, they DID have jurisdiction in their cases, like it or not. America arrogantly proclaims that its law spans the world… and that’s not right (it puts a new spin on the Cold War, doesn’t it?). Remember that on Election Day…

BMD

McCain’s World: Goodbye, Reason

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In which world does Senator John McCain (R-AZ) live in? I’ll bet you that it’s the one where an old East German woman named Kristiana (from the hilarious movie Good Bye, Lenin!) lived. Kristiana, a strong believer in communist ideals, survived a heart attack and a brief coma in 1989, on the eve of the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (DDR, the communist part of postwar Germany). She can’t leave her bed now, so her son, in order to save her from depression and death, creates an fictive DDR around her, with fake shows of the DDR state-controlled television on her TV set, West German “defectors” staying at her home, etc.

Just like Kristiana, Senator McCain lives in a world where Pravda is still a communist daily and a must-read publication for the majority of Russians, where a Russian citizen “can’t publish a testament like the one I (McCain) just offered”. In this world, the Russian authorities control all the Russian media and where Americans live in a country “governed by the rule of law that is clear consistently and impartially enforced”. The obvious conclusion would be that the oppressed Russian masses could only hope for an American intervention to liberate them, just as it was the case with Iraq, Afghanistan, and so many others. It’s useless and, in fact, cruel to awaken McCain from his prolonged dream. How shall he survive in a different world? What’ll he say when he learns that Soviet Pravda was bought by a Greek millionaire soon after the end of the USSR and that there are several Pravdas now, mostly marginal publications, some of them present only on the internet? Won’t he go mad when he learns that America’s prison population is much bigger than Russia’s?

Well, after all, Mr McCain may not go mad. Several days before the murder of the American ambassador in Libya, McCain encouraged US President Obama to intervene militarily in Syria, so that in future the relations between Syria and the USA would be as excellent as the relations between post-Qaddafi Libya and Washington are. This idea surfaced in the Washington Post in the form of a letter to the editor. Even a person with John McCain’s heated imagination could hardly see the murder of the American ambassador in the course of a violent attack as a sign of the excellence of bilateral relations. Therefore, McCain and his two “amigos”, US Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), directed their ire against Susan Rice, the American representative at the UN, who had the stupidity to call the attack against an American consulate a legitimate protest.

In fact, Susan Rice didn’t say anything different from what the three “amigos” wrote in their letter to the Washington Post. In fact, she was more moderate in her misconception of reality than Mr McCain, who presented American-Libyan relations as a paradigm of excellence. However, somehow, she bore all the blame, while McCain played the role of a strict “government inspector”. After that, there’s no point in expecting Mr McCain to faint upon learning that the US economy is “in the possession of the corrupt and powerful few” (just like the Russia of Mr McCain’s nightmares). Or that Russia has gay clubs and a gay theatre scene… that same Russia which he accuses of “codifying bigotry” against homosexuals.

Interestingly, some of Mr McCain’s accusations against Russia can be turned against the USA, or, rather, against the policy which the USA carries out thanks to people like McCain. Here are some examples. McCain wrote, “How has he (Putin) strengthened Russia’s international stature? By allying Russia with some of the world’s most offensive and threatening tyrannies”. One might reply that the USA allies itself with such impeccable democrats as the King of Saudi Arabia and the Emir of Qatar. One might say that the rebels whom the USA supports in Syria are leading that country to a junta enforcing sharia law in its most medieval form. Maybe, Mr McCain would wake up to reality when he learns that out of 19 terrorists involved in the 9/11 terrorist act of 2001 15 were Saudis and not a single one was from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria… the countries destroyed by the USA in the course of the so-called “War on Terror”. Oh, no, don’t tell that to Mr McCain. That’d be too cruel. Let him live with his dreams.

19 September 2013

Dmitri Babich

Voice of Russia World Service

http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_09_19/McCain-s-world-Good-bye-reason-4247/

Editor’s Note:

It’s not just John McCain. The American media in general doesn’t know shit from shinola about Russia, but that doesn’t stop them from lecturing and hectoring. Anglo Americans spring from colonies settled by slave-drivers, religious nutters, and grasping land thieves. You’d think that they’d get off their moral high horse… it’s not only ridiculous, it’d be rolling on the floor funny if these self-preening and hypocritical charlatans didn’t have nuclear weapons.

To think that they scream about the sanity of the Kim régime in the DPRK… do remember Nat Turner, the Trail of Tears, the Texas Revolt, Wounded Knee, Hiroshima, and Guantánamo… reality’s a bitch, ain’t it?

BMD

18 September 2013. You Can’t Make Up Shit Like This… Former NSA and CIA Chief Sees Future of Alcoholism for Snowden

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Editor’s Foreword:

I knew that the Amerikantsy believed their own propaganda and think overly highly of themselves, but this is over the top even for them. Read on…

BMD

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Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said that he envisioned a grim future of boredom and alcoholism for fugitive American intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, now in Russia. The Washington Post quoted Hayden as saying in response to a question about Snowden at a discussion forum held in a church across from the White House earlier this week, “I suspect he will end up like most of the rest of the defectors who went to the old Soviet Union… isolated, bored, lonely, depressed, and most of them ended up alcoholics”. Hayden, now a principal at the Chertoff Group, a security consultancy co-founded by former US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, described Snowden as “a troubled young man… morally arrogant to a tremendous degree, but a troubled young man”. Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who helped to get temporary asylum status for Snowden, said that Snowden, a computer specialist and former NSA employee, currently resides anonymously in Russia, going for walks and travelling without being recognised. Earlier this summer, Snowden was the focus of international attention after he leaked classified information about widespread US government surveillance programmes to the media. He fled to Hong Kong, and, then, to Russia, where he received asylum in July after spending weeks in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport.

18 September 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://www.en.rian.ru/world/20130918/183535169/Former-NSA-CIA-Chief-Hayden-Sees-Future-of-Alcoholism-for-Snowden—Report.html

Editor’s Afterword:

God, Snowden’s gotten their goat but good. This is “sour grapes” of the choicest vintage. Russian reports have it that Eddie’s moving freely and that he’s not bored or despondent… quite the contrary. Chertoff was a brutal and conscienceless consigliere for the Bush junta; he wrote the legal justification for torture and other such pleasantries in the so-called “War on Terror”. That’s the kind of person that Hayden works for… shitbirds of a feather flock together, y’ know, and “like does call unto like”. I’d say that if Hayden maligns you, it’s a compliment of the highest order. After all, he’s saying that Eddie’s not like him (or Chertoff)… and that’s a GOOD thing, kids. If the goodthinkers call you “disordered”, then, it probably means that you’re courageous and well-centred. Hayden’s a career spook, y’ gotta remember… he was the initiator of the lawless surveillance programme exposed by Snowden (that is, he DEFENDS government spying on the people). Methinks that the schmidiot was just “hoist by his own petard”… and he doesn’t realise it. It tells you about the intelligence level of Republicans (do note how Republicans defend torture, spying on ordinary folks, murder by drone, and kidnapping abroad)…

One last thing… as for “morally arrogant”, I don’t think that a former Langley operative has the high ground on that. After all, remember Ecumenical Patriarch Maximos Vaportzis (he was a SOCIALIST… oh, the humanity!)… Langley did topple him in a coup, after all…

BMD