Congress voted on border wall in 2006, Hillary, Schumer, Feinstein voted Yes https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00262 … Bernie voted no http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll446.xml …
Images (4) March 4, 2017
Posted by rogerhollander in Humor, Uncategorized.Tags: drone missiles, Humor, klan, nike, political satire, satire, universal soldier
add a comment
Roger’s note: Here are some more images, which I hope are worth at least a thousand words. But I add a few anyway (here in Ecuador my fruit lady always throws in some extra, it’s called “Yapa.”)
You can always count on those who benefit, always unjustly, from the status quo, to come up with what are supposed to appear to be “self-evident” eternal truths. Of course these are nothing more than verbal slights of hand designed to take the wind out of the efforts of those who struggle for change (justice).
This cartoon was designed for a Clinton victory, but because she lost the civilians of mostly Muslim countries will have to continue to blasted to smithereens by a male president. Well, at least he is white and not a Black Kenyan.
How dare it be suggested that this traditional American value group be considered as terrorist.
Nike has somehow been able to withstand my my many years of personal boycott. When I could only find a baseball cap that fit me with the logo I wanted, for the first time in ages I purchased the slash. Please don’t tell anyone.
Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister. January 31, 2017
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Constitution, Human Rights, Israel, Gaza & Middle East, Trump, Uncategorized, War on Terror.Tags: aclu, Anwar al-Awlaki, civil liberties, dirty wars, drone missiles, due process, glenn greenwald, jeremy scahill, lee fang, Nasser al-Awlaki., navy seal team 6, obama assassin, presidential assassination, roger hollander, trump assassin, yemen
add a comment
Roger’s note: As we confront the groundwork for massive atrocities being laid in these first days of the neo-Fascist Trump government, perhaps we need to be reminded that a substantial amount of the groundwork had already been put in place, much of it by the Obama administration. That the political classes and the mainstream media have no problem with the president of the United States ordering bombings that kill dozens of civilians, including American citizens, it an abomination. I had read in the New York Times that an American soldier died in these attacks. That was it. No mention of the atrocity described in this article.
In 2010, President Obama directed the CIA to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime, and the agency successfully carried out that order a year later with a September 2011 drone strike. While that assassination created widespread debate — the once-again-beloved ACLU sued Obama to restrain him from the assassination on the ground of due process and then, when that suit was dismissed, sued Obama again after the killing was carried out — another drone killing carried out shortly thereafter was perhaps even more significant yet generated relatively little attention.
Two weeks after the killing of Awlaki, a separate CIA drone strike in Yemen killed his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, along with the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis. The U.S. eventually claimed that the boy was not their target but merely “collateral damage.” Abdulrahman’s grief-stricken grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, urged the Washington Post “to visit a Facebook memorial page for Abdulrahman,” which explained: “Look at his pictures, his friends, and his hobbies. His Facebook page shows a typical kid.”
Few events pulled the mask off Obama officials like this one. It highlighted how the Obama administration was ravaging Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries: just weeks after he won the Nobel Prize, Obama used cluster bombs that killed 35 Yemeni women and children. Even Obama-supporting liberal comedians mocked the arguments of the Obama DOJ for why it had the right to execute Americans with no charges: “Due Process Just Means There’s A Process That You Do,” snarked Stephen Colbert. And a firestorm erupted when former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs offered a sociopathic justification for killing the Colorado-born teenager, apparently blaming him for his own killing by saying he should have “had a more responsible father.”
The U.S. assault on Yemeni civilians not only continued but radically escalated over the next five years through the end of the Obama presidency, as the U.S. and the U.K. armed, supported, and provide crucial assistance to their close ally Saudi Arabia as it devastated Yemen through a criminally reckless bombing campaign. Yemen now faces mass starvation, seemingly exacerbated, deliberately, by the U.S.-U.K.-supported air attacks. Because of the West’s direct responsibility for these atrocities, they have received vanishingly little attention in the responsible countries.
In a hideous symbol of the bipartisan continuity of U.S. barbarism, Nasser al-Awlaki just lost another one of his young grandchildren to U.S. violence. On Sunday, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, using armed Reaper drones for cover, carried out a commando raid on what it said was a compound harboring officials of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A statement issued by President Trump lamented the death of an American service member and several others who were wounded, but made no mention of any civilian deaths. U.S. military officials initially denied any civilian deaths, and (therefore) the CNN report on the raid said nothing about any civilians being killed.
But reports from Yemen quickly surfaced that 30 people were killed, including 10 women and children. Among the dead: the 8-year-old granddaughter of Nasser al-Awlaki, Nawar, who was also the daughter of Anwar Awlaki.
As noted by my colleague Jeremy Scahill — who extensively interviewed the grandparents in Yemen for his book and film on Obama’s “Dirty Wars” — the girl “was shot in the neck and killed,” bleeding to death over the course of two hours. “Why kill children?” the grandfather asked. “This is the new (U.S.) administration — it’s very sad, a big crime.”
The New York Times yesterday reported that military officials had been planning and debating the raid for months under the Obama administration, but Obama officials decided to leave the choice to Trump. The new president personally authorized the attack last week. They claim that the “main target” of the raid “was computer materials inside the house that could contain clues about future terrorist plots.” The paper cited a Yemeni official saying that “at least eight women and seven children, ages 3 to 13, had been killed in the raid,” and that the attack also “severely damaged a school, a health facility and a mosque.”
As my colleague Matthew Cole reported in great detail just weeks ago, Navy SEAL Team 6, for all its public glory, has a long history of “‘revenge ops,’ unjustified killings, mutilations, and other atrocities.” And Trump notoriously vowed during the campaign to target not only terrorists but also their families. All of that demands aggressive, independent inquiries into this operation.
Perhaps most tragic of all is that — just as was true in Iraq — al Qaeda had very little presence in Yemen before the Obama administration began bombing and droning it and killing civilians, thus driving people into the arms of the militant group. As the late, young Yemeni writer Ibrahim Mothana told Congress in 2013:
Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants. … Unfortunately, liberal voices in the United States are largely ignoring, if not condoning, civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings in Yemen.
During George W. Bush’s presidency, the rage would have been tremendous. But today there is little outcry, even though what is happening is in many ways an escalation of Mr. Bush’s policies. …
Defenders of human rights must speak out. America’s counterterrorism policy here is not only making Yemen less safe by strengthening support for AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] but it could also ultimately endanger the United States and the entire world.
This is why it is crucial that — as urgent and valid protests erupt against Trump’s abuses — we not permit recent history to be whitewashed, or long-standing U.S. savagery to be deceitfully depicted as new Trumpian aberrations, or the war on terror framework engendering these new assaults to be forgotten. Some current abuses are unique to Trump, but — as I detailed on Saturday — some are the decades-old byproduct of a mindset and system of war and executive powers that all need uprooting. Obscuring these facts, or allowing those responsible to posture as opponents of all this, is not just misleading but counterproductive: Much of this resides on an odious continuum and did not just appear out of nowhere.
It’s genuinely inspiring to see pervasive rage over the banning of visa holders and refugees from countries like Yemen. But it’s also infuriating that the U.S. continues to massacre Yemeni civilians, both directly and through its tyrannical Saudi partners. That does not become less infuriating — Yemeni civilians are not less dead — because these policies and the war theories in which they are rooted began before the inauguration of Donald Trump. It’s not just Trump but this mentality and framework that need vehement opposition.
If Afghan Lives Mattered, Dallas Lives Would Matter August 31, 2016
Posted by rogerhollander in Afro-American, Imperialism, Iraq and Afghanistan, ISIS/ISIL, Israel, Gaza & Middle East, Police, Racism, Uncategorized, War.Tags: Afghanistan War, black lives matter, dallas shooting, david swanson, drone missiles, police violence, racism, roger hollander, terrorism, war on terror, weapons industry
add a comment
Roger’s note: this article was written following the shooting of police in Dallas in early July, which itself followed on the heels of the latest round of police shooting unarmed African Americans. What I like about this article is that it makes the connection between the United States’ illegal and endless aggression in Afghanistan and violence at home. I again reminded of Malcolm X’s notorious remark in the immediate aftermath of John Kennedy’s assassination: “the chickens have come home to roost.”
Capitalism and imperialism go hand in hand. As we await another sham election in the United States, we know in our heart of hearts and mind of minds that our entire government — presidency, congress, courts — is nothing more or less than the administrators and executors of the Empire; and that implies responsibility for the crimes and suffering abroad as well as at home. Unfortunately, no election (even Saint Bernie) is going to effect this grim reality. It is up to us, the 99 percent.
By David Swanson
The man who murdered police officers in Dallas, Texas, this week had earlier been employed in a massive operation, now in its 15th year, that has killed many thousands of people in Afghanistan. He was trained to kill by the U.S. military using U.S. tax dollars. He was conditioned to believe violence an appropriate response to violence by the examples everywhere to be found in U.S. public policy, history, entertainment, and language.
Murdering police officers because some other police officers committed murder is unfair, unjust, immoral, and certainly counterproductive on its own terms. The Dallas killer managed to get himself killed by means of a bomb delivered by a robot. The police could have waited him out but chose not to, and no one indoctrinated to accept violent revenge will blame them. But that technology will spread among police and non-police killers. The airwaves are reverberating with cries for a race war. Greater militarization of the police, not greater restraint, will follow this incident. More lives will be lost. More screams of agony will be heard over loved ones lost.
Murdering people in Afghanistan because some other people who had been to Afghanistan were suspected of committing murder was and is unfair, unjust, immoral, and certainly counterproductive on its own terms – and according to the White House this week it will continue for years to come. Not only did most people in Afghanistan not support the murders of September 11, 2001, but most people in Afghanistan had never heard of that crime. The global war on and of terrorism has been increasing terrorism for nearly 15 years. “When you drop a bomb from a drone… you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good,” said retired U.S. Lt. General Michael Flynn, who quit as head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in August 2014. “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just… fuels the conflict.”
The cry of “Black lives matter!” is not a proposal that white lives or police lives or soldiers’ lives or any lives do not matter. It is a lament over the disproportionate targeting of blacks by police shootings. The trick is to understand the shootings as the enemy, the militarizing and weaponizing policies as the enemy, and not some group of people.
The murders on 9/11 were not rightly understood. The enemy was murder, not Saudis or foreigners or Muslims. Now hundreds of times those murders have been added in response, making murder the big victor and peace the big loser. With no end in sight.
We must not go on trying to solve a problem with the same tools that created it. We must, in fact, proclaim that “All lives matter.” But if that is meant to include only the 4% of human lives contained within the United States, it will fail. We must stop training people to imagine that violence works, and hoping they will only use their violent skills abroad among the 96% of people who don’t matter.
Where is our outrage and our grief when the White House admits to killing innocents with drones? Where is our indignation over the people killed by the U.S. military in foreign lands? Where is our concern over U.S. weapons sales flooding the Middle East and other regions of the globe with instruments of death? When attacking ISIS just fuels ISIS, why is the only option ever considered more of the same?
What brings in campaign funding, what earns votes, what wins media coverage, what generates movie ticket sales, and what sustains the weapons industry may just be at odds with what protects all human lives including those we’re traditionally encouraged to think matter. But we can redirect our votes, our media consumption, and even our choice of industries to invest in.
Dallas lives are, whether we know it or not, going to go on not mattering, until Afghan and all other lives matter too.
4 Comments
If Afghan Lives Mattered, Dallas Lives Would Matter August 19, 2016
Posted by rogerhollander in Imperialism, Police, Uncategorized, War.Tags: Afghanistan War, black lives matter, dallas police, david swanson, drone missiles, imperialsim, michale flynn, policing, roger hollander, violence, war
add a comment
Roger’s note: this article was written in the aftermath of the killing of police officers in Dallas several weeks ago. What it does is show that there is in fact a trickle down effect: the trickle down of violence from our illegal foreign wars to the streets where we live. I am reminded of the notorious words of Malcolm X at news of the Kennedy assassination: “the chickens have come home to roost.”
Homeland Security is literally passing down surplus war armaments to the police. Virtually every small town police department in America is a prototype SWAT team.
Remember what our cops used to look like???
“Where have all the flowers gone … when will they ever learn???” From the Roman Empire to the Napoleonic Wars to the mid-twentieth century German European expansion to the twenty first century American military/economic imperialism … the seeds of destruction are within. But the cost. Oh, the cost.
By David Swanson
The man who murdered police officers in Dallas, Texas, this week had earlier been employed in a massive operation, now in its 15th year, that has killed many thousands of people in Afghanistan. He was trained to kill by the U.S. military using U.S. tax dollars. He was conditioned to believe violence an appropriate response to violence by the examples everywhere to be found in U.S. public policy, history, entertainment, and language.
Murdering police officers because some other police officers committed murder is unfair, unjust, immoral, and certainly counterproductive on its own terms. The Dallas killer managed to get himself killed by means of a bomb delivered by a robot. The police could have waited him out but chose not to, and no one indoctrinated to accept violent revenge will blame them. But that technology will spread among police and non-police killers. The airwaves are reverberating with cries for a race war. Greater militarization of the police, not greater restraint, will follow this incident. More lives will be lost. More screams of agony will be heard over loved ones lost.
Murdering people in Afghanistan because some other people who had been to Afghanistan were suspected of committing murder was and is unfair, unjust, immoral, and certainly counterproductive on its own terms – and according to the White House this week it will continue for years to come. Not only did most people in Afghanistan not support the murders of September 11, 2001, but most people in Afghanistan had never heard of that crime. The global war on and of terrorism has been increasing terrorism for nearly 15 years. “When you drop a bomb from a drone… you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good,” said retired U.S. Lt. General Michael Flynn, who quit as head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in August 2014. “The more weapons we give, the more bombs we drop, that just… fuels the conflict.”
The cry of “Black lives matter!” is not a proposal that white lives or police lives or soldiers’ lives or any lives do not matter. It is a lament over the disproportionate targeting of blacks by police shootings. The trick is to understand the shootings as the enemy, the militarizing and weaponizing policies as the enemy, and not some group of people.
The murders on 9/11 were not rightly understood. The enemy was murder, not Saudis or foreigners or Muslims. Now hundreds of times those murders have been added in response, making murder the big victor and peace the big loser. With no end in sight.
We must not go on trying to solve a problem with the same tools that created it. We must, in fact, proclaim that “All lives matter.” But if that is meant to include only the 4% of human lives contained within the United States, it will fail. We must stop training people to imagine that violence works, and hoping they will only use their violent skills abroad among the 96% of people who don’t matter.
Where is our outrage and our grief when the White House admits to killing innocents with drones? Where is our indignation over the people killed by the U.S. military in foreign lands? Where is our concern over U.S. weapons sales flooding the Middle East and other regions of the globe with instruments of death? When attacking ISIS just fuels ISIS, why is the only option ever considered more of the same?
What brings in campaign funding, what earns votes, what wins media coverage, what generates movie ticket sales, and what sustains the weapons industry may just be at odds with what protects all human lives including those we’re traditionally encouraged to think matter. But we can redirect our votes, our media consumption, and even our choice of industries to invest in.
Dallas lives are, whether we know it or not, going to go on not mattering, until Afghan and all other lives matter too.
Sanders Prepares to Bow Down to Hillary, But Many of His Supporters Won’t May 8, 2016
Posted by rogerhollander in 2016 election, bernie sanders, donald trump, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Imperialism, Uncategorized.Tags: Afghanistan, bernie sanders, democratic party, donald trump, drone missiles, glen ford, hillary clinton, imperialsim, isis, political reform, roger hollander, Syria
add a comment
Roger’s note: this article refers to Bernie Sanders as an “imperialist pig.” That’s a pretty strong dose of medicine. The Internet is saturated with Bernie supporters accolades balanced by Clinton trashing (this does warm the heart, however). They would not take kindly to the denigration of their Saviour any more than an evangelical Christian to hers. Yet the record is the record. From Israel to Afghanistan to Syria to drone missiles whose victims indeed feel the bern, Sanders has been on the side of American imperialism. Ironically, it is Trump who has challenged the Empire, although as this article states, if he doesn’t change that tune he will pay for it.
As for reforming the Democratic Party, I gave up on that after I worked my butt of to elect Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1964 election campaign peace candidate and subsequent Vietnam War Criminal.
I got a real good laugh when I read this today on an Instagram site:
“You don’t like Isis? Join it and change the system from the inside.”
I recommend this wisdom to all those kindly and idealistic souls who have their heart, if not their mind, in the right place and hope to turn the Democratic Party into the party of peace and freedom. Faith based politics.
From Black Agenda Report, April 27, 2016
Bernie Sanders has endorsed President Obama’s troop escalation in Syria, once again showing that “he is no more ‘progressive’ than Obama on foreign policy, and just as dishonest – a true Democrat. Sanders will ultimately bow to Hillary Clinton, while still claiming that the Democratic Party can be transformed from the inside. However, millions will have witnessed that the campaign proves exactly the opposite – and will seek alternatives.
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“His underlings are telling the troops that this whole electoral exercise will be worthwhile if they succeed in pushing through a progressive party platform, in Philadelphia.”
The 2016 presidential season will only be of historical significance if it leads to a fracturing of the duopoly electoral system in the United States, a “trap within a trap” in which the rich control both parties – one of which is always the overt party of white supremacy. Donald Trump has already succeeded in creating a “market” for a second right-wing party by stripping the GOP’s’ appeal to its raw, racist, white nationalist essentials – a political nightmare for every corporate public relations department in the nation. Corporate logos will be hidden in brown paper bags at the Republican convention, in Cleveland.
It is difficult to imagine how the Trump rank and file and the party’s corporate “establishment” will paper over their irreconcilable differences, rooted in the party’s failure to preserve skin privilege and good jobs in a White Man’s Country. Just as brazenly, Trump, the rabble rousing billionaire, has violated the most sacred ruling class taboos by rejecting the national security rationale for the hyper-aggressive, ever-expanding, global U.S. military presence. If Trump fails to convincingly recant such heresies, the rulers will deal with him with extreme prejudice.
“Trump has violated the most sacred ruling class taboos by rejecting the national security rationale for the hyper-aggressive, ever-expanding, global U.S. military presence.”
Bernie Sanders presents no such threat to Empire. He supports President Obama’s illegal drone wars and the 15-year occupation of Afghanistan. Should he somehow be elected president, Sanders would follow Obama’s practice of reserving Tuesday’s for choosing targets from his “Kill List.” To circumvent U.S. and international prohibitions against assassination, Sanders offers the same “self-defense” justification as the Israelis do, when they slaughter Palestinians by the thousands. “There are people out there who want to kill Americans, who want to attack this country, and I think we have a right to defend ourselves,” Sanders told Chris Hayes, of MSNBC.
The nominally socialist senator from Vermont claims that he differs from Hillary Clinton on foreign policy because she “is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be.” During the New Hampshire debate, Sanders said the ouster of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein “destabilized the entire region” and the overthrow and death of Muammar Gaddafi “created a vacuum for ISIS” in Libya. “Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow,” Sanders told the crowd, back in February, “but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS.”
“It doesn’t bother Sanders a bit that the U.S. presence on sovereign Syrian soil is illegal, an act of war.”
His leftish boosters clung to these utterances as proof that Sanders was, deep down, a peaceable kind of guy, in sharp contrast to “Queen of Chaos” Clinton. Tuesday, however, as he was losing four of five primaries, Sanders showed that he is no less a warlord than Barack Obama – who, like Sanders, based his “peace candidate” appeal on his 2002 opposition to the Iraq invasion. Obama announced he was sending 250 more U.S. Special Forces troops into Syria, supposedly to fight ISIS and to arm and train more of those elusive, damn-near-extinct “moderate” rebels. It doesn’t bother Sanders a bit that the U.S. presence on sovereign Syrian soil is illegal, an act of war, as is U.S. funding and training of fighters attempting “regime change.”
“Here’s the bottom line,” said Sanders. “ISIS has got to be destroyed, and the way that ISIS must be destroyed is not through American troops fighting on the ground.” U.S. Special Forces have already been engaged in combat operations in Syria, as Sanders should know. Nevertheless, he plowed on:
“I think what the president is talking about is having American troops training Muslim troops, helping to supply the military equipment they need, and I do support that effort. We need a broad coalition of Muslim troops on the ground. We have had some success in the last year or so putting ISIS on the defensive, we’ve got to continue that effort.”
What Sanders is saying is that he would continue Obama’s policy of regime change, despite the “unintended consequences” and its clear illegality. He is no more “progressive” than Obama on foreign policy, and just as dishonest – a true Democrat.
“Sanders opposes ‘regime change’ except when it is perpetrated by a Democratic administration.”
The same day, Sanders sidestepped Joe Scarborough’s attempts to get him to agree that Hillary Clinton is a “hawk” on foreign policy. “I don’t want to characterize her, but I think our views on foreign policy are different,” Sanders told the MSNBC host. “I think my views are a lot closer to President Obama’s than they are to Hillary Clinton’s…. I believe it must be Muslim troops on the ground who do the fighting with the support of the United States. I will do everything that I can to prevent our troops from getting involved in perpetual warfare in the Middle East.”
A distinction without a difference, as they say. Sanders opposes “regime change” except when it is perpetrated by a Democratic administration. He really doesn’t mind U.S. “boots on the ground” in other people’s countries, as long as they are arming and training people of native religions and races to kill others of their kind, and U.S. casualties are kept to a minimum.
Sanders is an imperialist pig. Although his self-image is that of a Scandinavian social democrat, Sanders is more like a French “socialist” who supports the maintenance of a safety net for his own people, but reserves the right to routinely commit mass murder in the former colonies in order to preserve the French “way of life” and “values.”
With the mathematics of the presidential primary race now undeniable, Sanders is preparing his supporters to scale back their dreams of social transformation – which, for some of them, includes a genuine retreat from Empire as well as a new domestic deal. His underlings are telling the troops that this whole electoral exercise will be worthwhile if they succeed in pushing through a progressive party platform, in Philadelphia. Then it will be time to unite with Hillary, the plutocrats’ candidate, in the battle against the dreaded Trumpster.
“Sanders is preparing his supporters to scale back their dreams of social transformation.”
Bernie Sanders is peddling the sucker’s line, that the Democratic Party can be transformed from the inside. However, the actual experience of the campaign, as witnessed by millions of young, newly energized citizens, is proving exactly the opposite; that this corporate-crafted Democratic mechanism and its interlocking Republican counterpart are tools of the oligarchy, designed to manufacture consent to corporate rule and corral and crush dissent.
When Sanders consummates his “sheep dog” assignment, he will deflate to his original state: a small-town Democratic Party operative. Most of his supporters will acquiesce to Hillary’s nomination – just as most people everywhere acquiesce to everything most of the time. But, a significant proportion, numbering in the millions, and including the half of young African Americans that have rejected the Black Misleadership Class’s slavish allegiance to the Democratic Party hierarchy, will not. And, although Hillary Clinton will surely win victory in November with her “big tent” Democratic Party – flush with white suburbanites who, only yesterday, were Republicans – it will be a Party that is even more hostile to Blacks and progressives than before Donald Trump plunged the duopoly into crisis.
Millions of people, especially young folks, will be looking for an alternative to the Democrats and the Republicans – or to electoral politics, entirely. It’s up to the Left to give it to them.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Stand with Veterans For Peace on November 11 November 10, 2015
Posted by rogerhollander in Peace, War.Tags: Afghanistan, armistice day, drone missiles, november 11, nuclear war, peace, remembrance day, roger hollander, Syria, ukraine, veterans day, veterans for peace, war
add a comment
Roger’s note: my annual November 11 “Glorify Way Day”contribution.
Veterans For Peace is calling on all our members to take a stand for peace this Armistice Day. We are calling on all our friends and allies to join us at the barricades of peace on November 11.
Over the last several years, Veterans For Peace chapters have taken the lead incelebrating Armistice Day on November 11. We are reclaiming the original intention of that day – a worldwide call for peace that was spurred by universal revulsion at the huge slaughter of World War One. In Canada and the United Kingdom, this day is known as Remembrance Day.
After World War II, the U.S. Congress decided to re-brand November 11 as Veterans Day. Who could speak against that? But honoring the warrior quickly morphed into honoring the military and glorifying war. Armistice Day was flipped from a day for peace into a day for displays of militarism.
This November 11, it is as urgent as ever to ring the bells for peace. Many Veterans For Peace chapters ring bells, and ask local churches to do the same, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, as was done at the end of World War One.
Visit the Armistice Day page for ways to get involved.
There are so many reasons we must press our government
to end reckless military interventions
that endanger the entire world.
- In Syria, the U.S. has armed and supported rebelswho share its goal of overthrowing the Assad government. U.S. intervention in Syria has been a major factor in the ongoing tragedy that has made refugees of half of all Syrians, and has done irreparable destruction to the nation of Syria. The U.S. government and military must end its support of the rebels and abandon its efforts at regime change. It must join in sincere diplomatic efforts with the Syrian government and Syrian opposition forces, along with Russia, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. All sides know that the solution to the Syrian war is political, not military. It is time to stop the bloodshed and the exodus of refugees, and to start talks that respect the self-determination of the Syrian people.
- In Afghanistan, the deliberate U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospitalwas followed by a weak apology from President Obama, and his announcement that he would break his promise to end that war, and keep thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond his presidency. Fourteen years of deliberate and reckless killing of thousands of Afghanistan civilians has not brought Afghanistan peace or stability.
All U.S. troops, planes, drones, contractors and NATO allies must leave Afghanistan. Let the Afghan people find their own peace and determine their own future.
- Don’t Tempt Nuclear War – End the U.S./NATO Confrontation with Russia. With Russia and the U.S. bombing different rebel targets in Syria, and with the U.S. and NATO pressing Russia on its very borders, the threat of yet another World War looms. The U.S. and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at one another, with the capacity to kill many millions of people in each country. Nuclear war between Russia and the United States, which was miraculously avoided during the tense standoff of the Cold War, has re-emerged as an all too real possibility.
- In Ukraine, the U.S. poured in many millions of dollars to stir up opposition to the elected (if corrupt) government, even supporting fascist gangs who led a violent coup that brought a rightwing, western-friendly government to power. Russian speaking Ukrainians in the east were immediately targeted by fascist elements who took control of Ukrainian military and security forces. The Russian speaking minority felt it necessary to organize armed self-defense. Russia facilitated a plebiscite in the Ukrainian province of Crimea, where Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet is based, leading to an overwhelming vote to rejoin the Russian federation.
U.S. and NATO forces must pull back from Russia’s borders. U.S. and NATO forces are stationed in Poland and the Baltic nations, encircling Russia on its own borders. A coordinated international media campaign portrays Russian President Putin as the aggressor, while NATO carries out threatening war games and the U.S. beefs up its first strike nuclear capacity in Europe.
NATO, originally organized to confront the Warsaw Pact forces of the Soviet Union, should be dismantled, instead of being used to intimidate Russia and morphing into an international intervention force serving the aims of those who believe in U.S. and Western global hegemony.
- The U.S. should pull back from its so-called “Pivot to Asia,” where 60% of U.S. naval forces will be deployed, and where the U.S. is building regional military alliances to confront China. In so doing, the U.S. has pressured the Japanese government to abandon its constitutional pledge not to deploy their military outside Japan’s borders, forced the South Korean government – against the will of its people – to build a naval base on Jeju Island, and continues to ignore the pleas of the Okinawan people to return a sense of sanity to their island by removing omnipresent military the U.S.
- The United States, Russia and all nuclear powers must begin living up to their obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which requires them to negotiate in good faith to reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons. The Marshall Islands is suing the U.S. and all nuclear powers because they are doing just the opposite. The U.S. government recently announced a thirty year program, estimated to cost One Trillion Dollars, to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal. In other words, the U.S. is building new generations of nuclear bombs and missiles. This cannot stand.
- U.S. drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond must end.
- The U.S. must begin dismantling its 900 military bases around the world.
- War Abroad Mirrors Racism and Violence at Home. The militarization of U.S. foreign policy and use of violence and war around the world is mirrored here at home by racist police killings, and the militarization of law enforcement and schools, where military recruiters often have total access to students. Racism and xenophobia are used to dehumanize Muslims and others in order to justify killing them in war in their own countries. We in Veterans For Peace realize this is the same hatred used here at home to justify killing black, brown, and poor people. It is the same fearmongering used to criminalize honest, hard-working people and tear immigrant families apart through deportation.
This Armistice Day Veterans For Peace calls for justice and peace at home and abroad. We call for the end to racist policies, and for equality for all people.
- Stop the War on Mother Earth. Veterans For Peace also sees the links between war and the destruction of the natural environment upon which all living creatures depend. Stubborn reliance on fossil fuels, and wars for control of them, are primary causes of the perilous climate change into which the world is descending. The ongoing nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan reminds us that nuclear power is neither green nor safe. Shortsighted energy policies threaten to make entire regions of the planet uninhabitable, turning millions of people into climate refugees. New and dangerous wars for water, land and other precious resources are almost certain to follow.
- Between nuclear war and climate disaster, we are facing the possibility of Hell on Earth, UNLESS we create a united worldwide movement for peace, justice, equality and sustainability.
For all of these reasons, stand with Veterans For Peace on Armistice Day, November 11, 2015
Remember to visit the Armistice Day page for ways to get involved!
CIA’s torture experts now use their skills in secret drones program June 8, 2015
Posted by rogerhollander in Torture, War.Tags: cia drone, CIA torture, civilian casualties, drone missiles, torture, trevor trim, War Crimes
add a comment
Roger’s note: I am reminded of the Richard Farina title: “I’ve been down so long, it looks like up to me.” In our upsidedown world it has become normal to promote (and elect!) war criminals and punish those who speak and work for peace.
US drones are so secret that the White House barely mentions them by name. Photograph: MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images
There are many similarities between CIA’s use of drones and torture: Secrecy, lack of oversight and yes, even some of the people overseeing the programs
The controversy over the CIA’s secret drone program has gone from bad to worse this week. We now know that many of those running it are the same people who headed the CIA’s torture program, the spy agency can bomb people unilaterally without the president’s explicit approval and that the government is keeping the entire program classified explicitly to prevent a federal court from ruling it illegal. And worst of all, Congress is perfectly fine with it.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that many of those in charge of the CIA’s torture program – the same people whose names were explicitly redacted from the Senate’s torture report in order to avert accountability – “have ascended to the agency’s powerful senior ranks” and now run the CIA drone program under the agency’s Counterterrorism Center. Rather than being fired and prosecuted, they have been rewarded with promotions.
The longtime Counterrorism Center chief who just stepped down, Michael D’Andrea, was previously in charge of the notorious CIA prison known as the Salt Pit, where prisoners were regularly tortured and some died. His replacement, Chris Wood, was also “central to the interrogation program”, according to the Times.
The only reason we know D’Andrea and Wood’s names is because the New York Times’ executive editor Dean Baquet commendably decided to publish them – unlike the many newspapers who refused to for virtually no other reason except for the fact that the CIA asked them not to. As Baquet put it to the Huffington Post: “It would have been weird to not name the guys who run it. They’re not undercover. They’re not unknown. They’re sort of widely known.”
Adding to the disturbing nature of the CIA’s ability to kill people in complete secrecy, the agency apparently now has a carte blanche to conduct drone strikes on its own. According to the New York Times, President Obama doesn’t individually approve them anymore – he lets the CIA unilaterally decide to kill people if the strikes “fit certain criteria.” We have no idea what those conditions are since virtually everything about drone strikes at the CIA is secret.
Prior to last week’s controversial drone strike, the public at least had the general outlines of what the supposed rules constraining drone strikes were. After the last major drone controversy in 2013, the president announced the government would need to know with “near certainty” that civilians would not get killed. Obama called it: “the highest standard we can set” in a highly publicized 2013 speech.
Yet, up until the Wall Street Journal reported it on Sunday, the public did not know that Obama secretly gave the CIA a “waiver” from those rules for drone strikes in Pakistan, the place where the vast majority of the CIA’s strikes over the last decade have occurred. The publicly-touted policy was made meaningless by a classified order the public had no idea about. (Sound familiar?)
The most absurd part of this whole debate is that the White House actually refused to admit that the two hostages killed in Pakistan died in a US drone strike. Despite an almost universal acknowledgement by media reports – and a multitude of leaks by anonymous US officials – that the hostages were killed by a CIA drone, the administration has attempted to argue that it was a “counterterrorism operation” that resulted in the hostages’ deaths. This led to an awkward exchange between the press and the White House press secretary Josh Earnest, in which it was clear to everyone in the room what had happened, but the White House could not utter the word “drone.”
The reason for this denial apparently has nothing to do with legitimate secrets; the administration just wants to avoid a court ruling their program illegal. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday: “the Attorney General’s office warned Mr. Obama that publicly disclosing the CIA’s role in this case would undermine the administration’s standing in a series of pending lawsuits challenging its legality”.
Think about that for a second: The Obama administration has promised more transparency around drone strikes, yet at the same time, won’t even acknowledge that the controversial drone strike it’s apologizing for even happened – just because such admission might force courts to hold the government accountable for its actions.
The dismal state of affairs around drone strike transparency was perfectly summed up in an exchange in early 2013, when the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman, then writing for Wired, asked Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein why, if the CIA repeatedly and brazenly lied to Congress about torture, she trusted the spy agency to tell the truth about drone strikes. Senator Feinstein’s response still encapsulates the current debate: “That’s a good question, actually. That’s a good question.”
More than two years later, we still don’t have an answer.
Endless War: Obama Secretly Extends US War on Afghanistan November 22, 2014
Posted by rogerhollander in Barack Obama, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.Tags: afghan government, Afghanistan, afghanistan airstrikes, afghanistan endgame, Afghanistan War, civilian casualties, drone missiles, endless war, Obama, Pentagon, permanent war, predator drones, roger hollander
add a comment
Roger’s note: who is writing the script for this horror movie, Joseph Goebbels or George Orwell? Who else could come up with such winners as “Operation Enduring Freedom” which has now morphed, thanks to War-Criminal-in-Chief Obama, into “Operation Resolute Support?” To describe aggressive warfare and the murder of innocent civilians? To maintain control over oil pipelines?
Why does that 1960s chant ring in my head: “Hey, Hey, LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?”
Obama allowed the military to dictate the terms of the endgame in Afghanistan
Last May 27, in an announcement in the White House Rose Garden, President Obama said:
“2014, therefore, is a pivotal year. Together with our allies and the Afghan government, we have agreed that this is the year we will conclude our combat mission in Afghanistan… America’s combat mission will be over by the end of this year. Starting next year, Afghans will be fully responsible for securing their country. American personnel will be in an advisory role. We will no longer patrol Afghan cities or towns, mountains or valleys. That is a task for the Afghan people.”
Never mind.
The president has now quietly authorized an expanded role for the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
The New York Times reported last night that Obama’s decision is the result of “a lengthy and heated debate” between the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon.
The Pentagon won. An official told the Times that “the military pretty much got what it wanted.”
Obama has also given the war in Afghanistan a new name: Operation Resolute Support.
Obama’s secret decision will keep American troops on the ground and fighting for at least another year and the US will continue using F-16 fighter jets, Predator and Reaper drones, and B-1 bombers.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Israel’s ‘Brutal Attack’ on Gaza Kills At Least 8 Children July 9, 2014
Posted by rogerhollander in Israel, Gaza & Middle East.Tags: children casualties, collective punishment, drone missiles, gaza, gaza attack, gaza strip, human rights, International law, israel, israeli attack, jon queally, Palestine, roger hollander
add a comment
Roger note: unfortunately this is really nothing new. The fratricidal war between Jews and Arabs has been going on for decades and no end is in sight. The seeds for this conflict were planted with the imposition of the Israeli state on Palestinian soil and will continue to sprout violence and death until some unforeseen day when a single secular state replaces the existing unsustainable divide. Of course, this can only happen if the ultra right racist Israeli government does not succeed in its attempt to conquer and annihilate the Palestinian peoples. In the mean time a hundred Palestinians die for every Israeli in a David and Goliath struggle.
Published on Wednesday, July 9, 2014 by Common Dreams
‘The death and injury to children caused by Israel’s military offensive on Gaza demonstrates serious and extensive disregard of fundamental principles of international law.’
Palestinians stand atop the rubble of a house which police said was destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City July 9, 2014. (Credit: Reuters/Mohammed Salem)
At least eight children are among those who have been killed in the Gaza Strip over the last twenty-four hours, according to various reports, as the Israeli military continued to bombard the Palestinian enclave using naval ships, fighter jets, and aerial drones.
Palestinian women grieve following the deaths of several people after an Israeli air strike on a home in the northern of Gaza Strip early Wednesday. (Credit: Mohammed Abed / AFP/Getty Images)
According to a report from the Defense of Children International (DCI-Palestine), six children were killed when a building was leveled by a missile that may have been fired from an Israeli drone on Tuesday afternoon in the city of Khan Younis.
According to the group:
The five families that reside in the building evacuated immediately after an Israeli aerial drone fired a warning missile. A number of neighbors, however, gathered on the roof in an effort to prevent the bombing. Shortly after 3 p.m., an Israeli airstrike leveled the building, and killed seven people, including five children, on the spot and injured 28 others.
Hussein Yousef Hussein Karawe, 13, Basem Salem Hussein Karawe, 10, Mohammad Ali Faraj Karawe, 12, Abdullah Hamed Karawe, 6, and Kasem Jaber Adwan Karawe, 12, died immediately, according to evidence collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine. Seraj Abed al-Aal, 8, succumbed to his injuries later that evening.
“The death and injury to children caused by Israel’s military offensive on Gaza demonstrates serious and extensive disregard of fundamental principles of international law,” said Rifat Kassis, executive director of DCI-Palestine. “Israeli forces must not carry out indiscriminate airstrikes in densely populated areas that fail to distinguish between military targets, civilians and civilian objects.”
RT.com posted dramatic and graphic footage that followed the bombing in Khan Younis:
“In Gaza, it is not a war or a military operation though it may look so. It is collective punishment and it is a brutal attack against all Palestinian people, and mainly civilians are paying the price.” —Dr. Mona El-Farra, from Gaza
In a post published by Common Dreams on Tuesday, Dr. Mona El-Farra, a Palestinian physician and human rights activist currently on the ground in Gaza, said the people there “do not have bomb shelters to escape to and hide” and rejected the idea that Israel’s assault could possibly be justified.
“These air raids fall on the majority of the population living in very crowded areas, so while they hit their targets, civilians pay a big price – we have many causalities and the numbers are rising every hour,” El-Farra said. “In Gaza, it is not a war or a military operation though it may look so. It is collective punishment and it is a brutal attack against all Palestinian people, and mainly civilians are paying the price.”
As Maureen Clare Murphy, managing editor of the Electronic Intifada website, notes:
The ongoing bombing campaign is the most severe violence inflicted by Israel on Gaza since its eight-day assault in November 2012, during which more than 150 Palestinians were killed, 33 of them children.
More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, including 350 children, during Israel’s three consecutive weeks of attacks from air, land and sea during winter 2008-09.
Twenty-five lives have been claimed by Israel in Gaza since Monday, including at least eight children, as warplanes bombed areas across Gaza, whose 1.7 million Palestinian residents live under a tightly-enforced siege and are unable to flee and have nowhere to seek shelter.
According to DCI-Palestine:
International humanitarian law prohibits indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks and requires that all parties to an armed conflict distinguish between military targets, civilians and civilian objects. Israel as the occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the Gaza Strip, is required to protect the Palestinian civilian population from violence.
While Israel relies on the principle of self defense to justify military offensives on Gaza, Israeli forces are bound to customary international law rules of proportionality and necessity.
Hamas’ military wing claimed responsibility for firing around 120 rockets from Gaza into southern and central Israel, with some reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, according to Haaretz. Israel’s “Iron Dome” anti-missile system has reportedly intercepted at least 23 rockets. While minimal property damage has been reported, there have been no serious casualties.
The Israeli military has mobilized thousands of reserve soldiers in preparation for any further escalation, according to news reports.
This tweeted image appears to show the child victims killed in the Khan Younis bombing:
#صورو لشهداء عائلة كوارع في #خانيونس أثناء الصلاة عليهم في أحد مساجد #خانيونس . http://t.co/EWEbdsTiig—
Muath Humaid-Gaza (@MuathHumaid) July 09, 2014
According to Ma’an news agency, the a total of twelve Palestinians have been killed on Wednesday in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll since Monday to 35 people and more than 300 injuries.
______________________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
U.S. Aid Wrapped In A Body Bag: Suing the Drone Makers May 24, 2014
Posted by rogerhollander in Israel, Gaza & Middle East, War, War on Terror.Tags: abby zimet, body bag, civilian casualties, drone missiles, drone victims, drones, reprieve, roger hollander, yemen, yemen drones
add a comment
Roger’s note: What will it take to end this barbarism???
05.23.14 – 8:39 PM
Mohammed Al-Qawli, an educational consultant in Yemen, remains haunted by the day in January 2013 he spent hours trying to collect the body parts of his brother Ali, a schoolteacher, and his cousin Salim, a student, both “accidentally” killed in a U.S. drone strike. Now Al-Qawli and human rights group Reprieve are mounting a legal challenge against the U.K government for failing to investigate violations of international law by communications giant British Telecom, which is allegedly facilitating U.S. strikes that have killed perhaps 1,000 Yemenis.
In April, Al-Qawli also launched the National Organization for Drone Victims in memory of his brother to allow “the voices of victims” to be heard and to work to end an ongoing U.S. targeted killing program that has had a “devastating” effect on communities throughout Yemen. While “Ali al-Qawli the schoolteacher has left us,” he notes, “his tremendous legacy of love, passion and hope remains…I hope that the American people (will) stand against the violent actions of their Nobel Peace Prize–winning president and join us in demanding that the U.S. government stop its blind killing of hundreds of innocent people.”
“I’d heard that the United States of America was sending support to Yemen, but for a long time I did not know what that meant. Now I can see it firsthand. I have received U.S. gifts and U.S. aid, wrapped in a body bag. These explosive fragments kill Yemenis, destroy their spirits, burn their bodies and only further empower the militants. The U.S. and Yemeni governments killed a young man who strongly opposed terrorism and tried to bring change through education – the very same things they purport to want themselves. I want to know why.”
roger hollander 
Eloquent and to the point, Mr. Swanson. And frankly, getting the money out of war would go 97% of the war to “curing” it. The rest would be a clean up operation, deprogramming the religious zealots that so conveniently drive the war machine for the corporate moguls.
The enemy is not black or white, the enemy is not Christian or Muslim, the enemy is not American of Arab, the enemy is MONEY. As long as someone can make a buck they dont give a damn who gets killed. We must learn to live without money. People can work for time credits- if it takes 10 minutes for a gallon of milk to go from cow to table, then you work 10 minutes and get your milk. Time cannot be stored, exchanged or corrupted the way money can. Money causes racism, polarization, environmental degradation, war and all the ills that afflict humanity. Doing away with it will solve all the world’s current problems. For more information write me guajolotl@aol.com
Kudos on a well-conceived and bravely written analysis. Brave, because while it is the only view which makes sense, it is not what our misled and fearful population wants to hear. The United States has a long history of justifying all violence perpetrated by itself, as inevitable. Ditto for foreign governments and people. That said, I refuse to give up! Were I a religious man, I’d be wearing a Saint Jude medallion.