Dissident Veteran For Peace

In "Indians at home – Indians in Cornwall, Indians in Wales, Indians in Ireland" I wrote about how European settler-colonialism, particularly by the English, was first inflicted upon other European peoples in Europe well before it was exported to other continents. This should be obvious to anyone with more than a passing knowledge of European history. Alas, it appears this is not the case.

Below is an interesting quote that speaks once more to this subject. Of course, I do not endorse Leyburn's lessons allegedly "learned from hard experience".

This use of the Scots-Irish as shock troops in the New World was quite similar to how the English government had used Scots settlers in Ulster against the Irish:

They lived on land in both regions that had often been forcibly taken from the natives. ... When the natives, whether Irish or Indian, refused to accept either the legality or the settlement, preferring rather to fight back by whatever means they could devise, the settlers fought equally hard to retain the homes and farms they had made by their own labor. They learned from hard experience that one must fight for what one has; that turning the other cheek does not guarantee property rights; in short, that might makes right, at least in the matter of life and land ownership.

Source: Clayton E. Cramer, Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform (Greenwood, 1999) pp. 30-31 quoting James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, 147-148.

Labels: Empire, history, identity, Indians, Ireland, quotations, United States, White folks

On December 8, 2020, I wrote about the State of Texas' motion in the Supreme Court to allow it to file a complaint over alleged problems in the 2020 election in several states. Back then I made two observations relevant to the present post.

First, I said: "I think the State of Texas should have standing but that is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition and it's motion comes awfully late." Second, I said: "If, as seems likely, the Supreme Court refuses to hear this complaint then it's probably game over for all the election challenges."

The Supreme Court did indeed reject Texas' motion. Here's the full text of the Court's unsigned order:

The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.

Now, it's clear Texas does not have an interest in how other states elect their own state officials. But the notion that they have no "judicially cognizable interest" in how other states elect the one President and VP of all of the United States defies logic and facially undermines constitutional republicanism. I'm not suggesting there were no reasonable grounds to deny Texas' motion but, rather, that the one the Court came up with was unreasonable. 

Supporters of Biden like to mention that many of the federal judges denying 2020 presidential election challenges have been Trump appointees. The implication is that the legal challenges have been so hollow that even Trump loyalists had to reject them.

There may truth to this but it doesn't follow that because Trump nominated these judges that they would necessarily do him any favors. That is the whole point of lifetime appointments for federal judges—to try to insulate them from political influence.

Also, Trump "relied on outside conservative legal organizations and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell" to select and manage the confirmation of his judicial nominees. Moreover, these are people who were on the judiciary career path long before anyone took a Trump presidency seriously and who always knew they would likely be on the bench long after Trump was gone. They might even despise Trump but were willing to accept a nomination (or, possibly, reject an election lawsuit) to advance their own careers and political commitments.

Thus, there are scant grounds to think Trump necessarily got special or even fair consideration of his post-election legal complaints. I'm not saying he was treated unfairly but that you cannot infer much from the fact that some Trump judicial appointees rejected his election claims.

###

The January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters are criminals who should be prosecuted. They are also fools and idiots who played right into the hands of the "progressive" authoritarians and their program of racism and repression.

Trump has now been impeached a second time on purely political grounds—they're afraid he'll beat them in another election. Barring a miraculous transformation I hope Trump quietly retires to another, far away country.

In any event, I read the new article of impeachment and it presents no sound legal basis to claim that Trump criminally incited the rioters. If prosecutors believe there is probable cause that Trump committed a crime then they should seek an indictment.

Instead, the Democrats and their media allies are simply hyping and milking the riot for every political advantage they can extract no matter how dishonest the effort. Referring to the upcoming impeachment trial, Jonathan Turley writes: "A private citizen is being called to the Senate to be tried for removal from an office that he does not hold." 

The Democrats had some conceivable legitimate grounds to impeach Trump while he was president though not on events connected to Russia or Ukraine. For instance, the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was, arguably, illegal under US and international law. It was also dangerous and counter to American strategic interests. Yet, because that attack was perceived to be in Israel's interests impeachment was never on the agenda for it.

Trump might also have been impeached for his attempt to suborn Mike Pence to violate the Constitution and federal law by unlawfully interfering with the certification of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. But, no, to impeach Trump for that would draw more unwanted attention to Pence who refused Trump's entreaties and followed the law while also undermining the Dems specious and profoundly hypocritical claims that for members of Congress to lawfully object to certification "borders on sedition or treason" and such.

###

The election of Donald Trump was always a symptom of the larger problems of, in no special order, economic inequality, toxic consumerism, empire, corporate globalization, Democratic race grifting for power, and the corruption of the media and political elites. Trump ran on a campaign that showed awareness of some of these problems but he was seemingly always a con man exploiting the justified grievances of millions of Americans. He betrayed them and never rose to the call of his office or of history.

Unfortunately, Trump's disastrous term has only worsened matters and emboldened "progressive" authoritarians to step up the repression of their political enemies, including the White working class, in general (which is not to say the GOP were ever their allies). This is Trump's fault, the fault of his many enemies, and, to no small extent, the fault of voters duped by him.

Biden claims he wants to unify the country but—and I hope I'm wrong when I say this—that's a lie to judge from so many of his other utterances and policy plans. When I saw recent photos of the unprecedentedly large military presence in the Capitol for the inauguration I was reminded of all the unpopular, repressive governments the US has propped in foreign countries over the years. Are chickens coming home to roost?

Virginia National Guard members in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 13, 2021 (U.S. Air National Guard photo by SSgt Bryan Myhr).

New Jersey National Guard members in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 12, 2021 (U.S. Air National Guard photo by MSgt Matt Hecht).

See also: Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations IV

 

Labels: Biden, class, Democrats, Empire, Iran, Israel, law, media, military, politics, race, repression, Supreme Court, Trump, voting

Yesterday, the AP and NPR both reported that the US Justice Department "is dropping the criminal case" against Michael T. Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser. This is not quite correct.

The criminal case against Flynn was made when he pled guilty three times to the charge of lying to FBI agents although, more than two years later, he tried to withdraw his guilty plea. What actually happened yesterday was that the DOJ filed a motion in United States v. Flynn asking the trial judge "to dismiss the criminal information" against Flynn.

So, the ball is in the judge's court, not the DOJ's as has been implied in media coverage. And I wouldn't be completely surprised if Judge Emmet Sullivan declines to grant the DOJ's motion. In any case, the gist of the DOJ's motion is not so much that Flynn didn't lie to the FBI agents, though they do cast doubt upon that, but that Flynn never should have been questioned by the FBI in the first place.

As a long time Russiagate skeptic, I am sympathetic to this argument and I can see a case to be made in Flynn's favor on the grounds of procedural, but not substantive, justice. And make no mistake procedural justice is important.

However, there are a lot of aspects to this case that, barring additional evidence, temper any sympathy I have for Flynn or make me skeptical that dropping the case is really warranted in the name of procedural, let alone substantive, justice.

It's worth pointing out that Flynn wasn't some naive apprentice carpenter from Kalamazoo who fell in with the wrong crowd. Flynn was a long-time, loyal servant of the Empire operating at the highest levels of a corrupt system, including a stint under Obama as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Here's my list of, for lack of a better term, aggravating circumstances:

1. No one held a gun to Flynn's head to force him to: a) meet with FBI agents in his White House office, b) without his attorney present, and c) without recording the interview.

2. Flynn pled guilty, in open court, on two separate occasions to the charge of "making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and also signed a written plea agreement to that effect, not to mention his public mea culpa. Here it's worth considering key portions of the transcript of Flynn's abortive sentencing hearing (click on images to enlarge them):


Many of the claims that Flynn and the DOJ are now making in favor of letting Flynn off the hook were already addressed by Flynn himself at his sentencing hearing.

3. Flynn reportedly cooperated fully with the Mueller investigation when he thought it served his interests to advance the Russiagate farce. It's worth pointing out that the Mueller investigation began during the Trump administration and was opened by none other than Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee.

4. The Trump administration possesses but refuses to release the actual recordings or transcript of recordings, in redacted form or otherwise, of Flynn's conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak. These recordings were reportedly made during the Obama administration under a FISA warrant. This is particularly irksome because of all the well-founded complaints about the Obama administration's abuses of power.

5. William Barr took over as Attorney General on February 14, 2019. The investigative phase of the Mueller probe ended on March 22, 2019, and the office was completely shut down on May 29, 2019. Yet, the Trump-Barr DOJ steadfastly prosecuted Flynn until yesterday and, although Mueller recommended no prison time for him, the Trump-Barr team reversed course and called for him to be locked up just last January.

6. Finally, like Trump and nearly all DC politicians, Flynn is a partisan and/or tool of the Israel Lobby. Flynn's first substantive post-election conversation with Kislyak was doing the bidding of Israel in trying to get a UN Security Council vote against Israel's illegal settlements blocked (see here and here). This aspect of the case was detailed in two pages (pp. 167-168) of the first volume of the Mueller Report, buried among the hundreds of other pages of text, and has been largely ignored in the mainstream US media (but not as much in the mainstream Israeli media).

Furthermore, it has even been covered up in some legal pleadings filed against Flynn. The criminal information that the DOJ now seeks to have dismissed says that: "the defendant falsely stated and represented to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in Washington, D.C., that ... On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution ..." No mention whatsoever is made in the information of which country was the subject of that resolution or why Flynn would reach out to the Russian ambassador to discuss it.

Similarly, most Americans have no idea that Israel was the country funneling arms to Iran as part of the illegal Iran-Contra affair. Likewise, the name of the country whose forces killed them fails to appear in the posthumous Navy Cross citations of Philip McCutcheon Armstrong and Francis Brown. Nor does it appear in the Medal of Honor citation of William Loren McGonagle. The marker for the five sailors and one Marine killed in the attack on the USS Liberty and buried in a mass grave at Arlington National Cemetery also gives no indication of who killed these men or the other 28 buried elsewhere who died with them on June 8, 1967.

In sum, I am by no means convinced that ending the case against Flynn satisfies any norms of procedural justice and the attempt seems to me to be primarily a political act of one group of crooks looking out for one of their own. Flynn appears to be clearly guilty of the substantive matter for which he was charged and repeatedly pled guilty.

On the other hand, I would definitely support investigating and prosecuting, as warranted, the allegations of FBI and prosecutorial misconduct in Russiagate (FWIW, I think the creation and release of the whole second volume of the Mueller Report was an abuse of power). Congressional action against law enforcement and prosecutorial abuse, not to mention mass surveillance, is long overdue. How about repealing the Logan Act and the Espionage Act, too? I won't hold my breath waiting for any of these things to happen.

Last revised: 13 May 2020

Labels: crime, Empire, Israel, Israel Lobby, Michael T. Flynn, Obama, Robert S. Mueller, Russia, Trump

I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.

Source: Attributed to Baron Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild in The Independent (UK). Baron Rothschild was the father of Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild. Among other things, the elder Rothschild, in 1887, financed the notorious De Beers diamond conglomerate in Africa. The son was the Lord Rothschild to whom the infamous Balfour Declaration was addressed.

Note: Versions of this quotation are prolific on the internet. However, there are also many claims that the quote is apocryphal (see e.g. this one). I don't know the truth; however, I do know that my source is a 2004 article authored by Paul Vallely (a distinguished British journalist and editor) and published in a reputable British newspaper. Vallely could have been clearer about which Nathan Rothschild he was referring to. Nevertheless because Vallely says in the same paragraph from which the quote derives that "in 1885 he was given the hereditary title of Baron Rothschild" I conclude that he attributed the remark to Nathaniel Mayer.

Labels: banking, diamonds, Empire, Israel, money, Palestine, quotations, Rothschild, Zionism

Islam, he [Khomeini] would always claim, was "the religion of militant individuals who are committed to faith and justice. It is the religion of those who desire freedom and independence. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism."

Source: Ayatollah Ruhollah Mūsavi Khomeini (from Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist) as quoted in Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong (New York: Knopf, 2014) p. 332.

Labels: Empire, Iran, Islam, Karen Armstrong, quotations, religion, resistance

'We're trying to defend the empire with a force about the size of the New York City police department,' said retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales Jr., former commandant of the U.S. Army War College.


As Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Carter, said this week, "For several decades to come there is no meaningful alternative to American supremacy, as a practical matter."

Source: "Cracks in America's Armor, or America's Will?" by David Wood, March 11, 2004. Newhouse News Service.

Labels: Empire, military, quotations, United States, War, Zbigniew Brzezinski

41. The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.

42. To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement. This is a paradox; whoever defeats a segment of the Empire becomes the Empire; it proliferates like a virus, imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes its enemies.

Source: The Cryptica Scriptura of VALIS by Philip K. Dick (Bantam Books, 1981).

Labels: Empire, Philip K Dick, quotations, violence

From Canada's National Post newspaper (click to enlarge):Thanks to Ken Dalton of Veterans For Peace, Chapter 21 for passing this along.

Labels: Empire, militarism, military, United States, War

I just finished reading Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War by Col. Andrew J. Bacevich (US Army, ret.). The 2010 book is Bacevich's contribution to Metropolitan Books' American Empire Project.

The "Washington rules," according to Bacevich, consist of a "credo" and a "trinity" and together they form "the basis for an enduring consensus" that underpins bipartisan American militarism in Washington, DC (15). Bacevich writes: "In the simplest terms, the credo summons the United States--and the United States alone--to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world" (12). The "trinity" represents:

an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism. [emphasis in original] (14)

The Pentagon's annual budget: "lubricates American politics, filling campaign coffers and providing a source of largesse--jobs and contracts--for distribution to constituents" (228). The Washington rules, Bacevich argues:

deliver profit, power and privilege to a long list of beneficiaries: elected and appointed officials, corporate executives and corporate lobbyists, admirals and generals, functionaries staffing the national security apparatus, media personalities and policy intellectuals from universities and research organizations. (228)

To the monetary and political benefits of adherence to the Washington rules, Bacevich adds the "psychic" appeal:

For many, the payoff includes the added, if largely illusory, attraction of occupying a seat within or near what is imagined to be the very cockpit of contemporary history. Before power corrupts it attracts and then seduces. The claims implicit in the American credo and the opportunities inherent in the sacred trinity combine to make the imperial city on the Potomac one of the most captivating, corrupt, and corrupting places on the face of the earth. (228-9)

There are a lot of good reviews of Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War online and so I won't spend any more time on the book except to share two quotes from Senator J. William Fulbright that Bacevich includes. The first is from Fulbright's 1966 book, The Arrogance of Power:

[Power] tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations--to make them richer and happier and wiser, to make them, that is, in its own shining image. ... Once imbued with the idea of mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God's work. The Lord, after all, would surely not choose you as His agent and then deny you the sword with which to work His will. (111)

From the 1966 book also comes this quote:

'Maybe we are not really cut out for the job of spreading the gospel of democracy,' Fulbright suggested. 'Maybe it would profit us to concentrate on our own democracy instead of trying to inflict our own particular version of it' on others. 'If America has a service to perform in the world,' he continued, 'it is in large part the service of her own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries we are not only living off our assets ... we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying freedom to the fullest.' (113)

Labels: Empire, J. William Fulbright, militarism, politics, quotations

They were, in a way, trying to imitate us [in film representations of Indians] but in another way they were trying to remember who they were. Every human being is a descendant of a tribe. So, these White people, they're the descendants of tribes, there was a time in their ancestry when they wore feathers, all right? And they wore beads and shells. There was a time in their ancestry, all right, before this colonizing mentality came and did to them, to turn them into the White people they are, and then it came and did it to us. The very same thing that happened to us happened to them.

Source: John Trudell, Lakota activist/poet in Reel Injun (Rezolution Pictures & the National Film Board of Canada, 2009)

See also:

• Indians at home – Indians in Cornwall, Indians in Wales, Indians in Ireland
• Skins & Fighting for Uncle Scum
• Quotable: "We believe in America"
• The "lower class" as Indians (and vice versa)
• Beads & Shells

Labels: art and literature, Empire, Hollywood, identity, Indians, White folks

Is there a fundamental or inherent difference between indigenous and white society? This is a relevant question, given the tendency of the dominant Western tradition to draw racial distinctions. Indigenous traditions, by contrast, include all human beings as equal members in the regimes of conscience ...

A deep reading of tradition points to a moral universe in which all of humanity is accountable to the same standard ... Though it may be emotionally satisfying for indigenous people to ascribe a greedy, dominating nature to white people, as an intellectual and political position this is self-defeating. It is more hopeful to listen to the way traditional teachings speaks of the various human families: they consider each one gifted and powerful in it own way, each with something different to contribute to the achievement to peace and harmony ...

The value of the indigenous critique of the Western world-view lies not in the creation of false dichotomies but in the insight that the colonial attitudes and structures imposed on the world by Europeans are not manifestations of an inherent evil: they are merely reflections of white society's understanding of its own power and relationship with nature. [pp. 20-21]

In his classic study Leadership (1978), James MacGregor Burns developed the concept of 'moral leadership'. Identifying a fundamental difference between what he called 'power -wielder' and true leaders, he argued that the manipulation of resources to effect the personal will or interest on the manipulator is not leadership at all; leadership must be rooted in a set of personal values consistent with and supportive of the collective's values. Burns's concept of moral leadership complements indigenous ideas. In particular, his critique of 'leaders' who are actually nothing more than politicians resembles the criticism expressed by many indigenous people with respect to their new leaders.

For Burns, the average politician in an electoral system is simply playing a power game in which he structures incentives to induce people to do what he wants--to vote for a certain party, support a particular policy, carry out a given order. [p. 45]

... sovereignty is an exclusionary concept rooted in an adversarial and coercive Western notion of power. Indigenous peoples can never match the awesome coercive force of the state; so long as sovereignty remains the goal of indigenous politics, therefore Native communities will occupy a dependent and reactionary position relative to the state. Acceptance of 'Aboriginal rights' in the context of state sovereignty represents the culmination of white society's efforts to assimilate indigenous people. [p. 59]

'in periods of calm the law may shape reality, in periods of change the law will follow reality and find ways to accommodate and justify it' [p. 83, quoting DJ Elazar, From Statism to Federalism--A Paradigm Shift," International Political Science Review 17(4), p. 428]

There is no inherent conflict between basic indigenous and non-indigenous values. Rather, it is the historical practice of politics (and the institutionalization of these patterns of governance) that contravenes the basic values of liberal-democratic and traditional indigenous philosophies alike. Manipulative mechanisms of control work against the best instincts of both Western and aboriginal value systems. [p. 132]

Source: Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto by Taiaiake Alfred (New York: Oxford UP, 1999)

Labels: Empire, Indians, law, quotations, White folks

Lyrics:
OK, I want to talk about Ireland
Specifically I want to talk about the "famine"
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no "famine"
See Irish people were only allowed to eat potatoes
All of the other food
Meat fish vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved
And then on the middle of all this
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me
See we're like a child that's been battered
Has to drive itself out of it's head because it's frightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive self-destruction
alcoholism, drug adiction
All desperate attempts at running
And in it's worst form
Becomes actual killing
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
where do they all come from
An American army regulation Says you mustn't kill more than 10% of a nation
'Cos to do so causes permanent "psychological damage"
It's not permanent but they didn't know that
Anyway during the supposed "famine"
We lost a lot more than 10% of our nation
Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration
But what finally broke us was not starvation
but it's use in the controlling of our education
Schools go on about "Black 47"
On and on about "The terrible famine"
But what they don't say is in truth
There really never was one
(Excuse me)
All the lonely people
(I'm sorry, excuse me)
Where do they all come from
(that I can tell you in one word)
All the lonely people
where do they all belong
So let's take a look shall we
The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC
And we say we're a Christian country
But we've lost contact with our history
See we used to worship God as a mother
We're sufferin from post traumatic stress disorder
Look at all our old men in the pubs
Look at all our young people on drugs
We used to worship God as a mother
Now look at what we're doing to each other
We've even made killers of ourselves
The most child-like trusting people in the Universe
And this is what's wrong with us
Our history books the parent figures lied to us
I see the Irish
As a race like a child
That got itself bashed in the face
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from
All the lonely people
Where do they all come from

Labels: Empire, Ireland, music, video, White folks

Right: A farmer argues that some of his sheep were killed by an American artillery strike. Listening is Gen. Abdul Razik, the commander of the Afghan Border Patrol, Lt. Col. William Clark and an interpreter. Photo by J.M. Simpson

The Lakewood, WA-based Fort Lewis Ranger has an article by J. M. Simpson in its January 27, 2010, print edition that discusses cooperation between the US Army in Afghanistan and Abdul Razik. An apparent online version of the article is much sanitized concerning Razik while in the print edition Simpson describes Razik as "the leader of a tribal militia and Afghan Border Police (ABP) force that extends across Kandahar and Helmand provinces." Simpson says Razik "is the most powerful Afghan official in the southern part of the country." Simpson continues with a physical description of the man but eventually tells readers bluntly, "Razik is a drug lord." Simpson continues:

By controlling both Kandahar and Helmand--which produce 80 percent of Afghanistan's opium, which consequently accounts for 90 percent of the world's supply--Razik has become very wealthy.

Estimates are that he makes between $5 and $6 million per month by running drugs ...

According to UNICEF the annual gross national income per capita of Afghanistan was $250 in 2007.

In America, we purport to be staunchly opposed to drugs and drug dealers. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are in prison for drug crimes and "According to FBI reports, 83 percent of drug arrests are for possession of illegal drugs alone." US troops are routinely and randomly tested for illicit drug use. So, why are US forces working with a violent drug kingpins like Razik?

Well, according to Simpson, Razik's drug "wealth has allowed him to create a 3500-man border patrol force ... which is fiercely loyal to him" and Razik aligned himself and his "force" with the US. Lt. Col. William Clark, commander of the Ft. Lewis-based 5th Stryker Brigade's 8th Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, knows all about Razik "and as such he has carefully cultivated a relationship with Razik in order for both men to get what they want." Simpson writes: " 'We understand each other; we get along,' said Clark before a recent meeting. They meet several times a week." The rest of the article goes on to describe how Clark and Razik reach an unspoken accomodation that will allow Razik's drugs to continue to flow freely as the Americans set up new "highway checkpoints on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border."

Ironically, in the same issue of the Fort Lewis Ranger featuring Simpson's article "8-1 'talks' with one of Taliban's most wanted" you will find a short AP article about a now-concluded court-martial against a young soldier who is blamed for the drug overdose death of his girlfriend in his Ft. Lewis barracks. She died after taking a mixture including oxycodone and oxymorphone--both are made from opium. Reportedly, at his court-martial, Private Timothy E. Bennitt "spoke authoritatively about how he began using painkillers when he returned to Fort Lewis after spending more than six months in Afghanistan ... Bennitt told Army Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks, who is presiding over the court-martial, that he had surgery for an eye injury ..." Bennitt was found guilty of manslaughter last Friday. Meanwhile, Abdul Razik thrives and is one of America's good buddies.

Razik was also profiled last month in Harper's in "The master of Spin Boldak: Undercover with Afghanistan's drug-trafficking border police" (read a long excerpt here) and was featured in a 2006 article "Inspiring Tale of Triumph over Taliban Not All it Seems" by Graeme Smith in the Canadian Globe and Mail.

Labels: Afghanistan, crime, Empire, War

The image at right is from 1994; it is still apt today.

Last Friday, Warren Olney spoke with guests about Haiti on his show, To the Point. If you listen to the program you can hear David Rothkopf essentially erasing the effects of foreign exploitation from Haiti's history and, typically, you can hear Robert Perito and Amy Wilentz bashing former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. If US leaders and the "experts-in-legitimation" such as Rothkopf, Perito, and Wilentz had supported Aristide instead of undermining him at virtually every step then it is quite conceivable that Haiti would have been in a much better position to deal with the recent earthquake.

Below are some excerpts from Paul Farmer's informative albeit compromised, partisan article in the April 15, 2004 edition of the London Review of Books, "Who removed Aristide?" Farmer was appointed as the United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti last fall by Bill Clinton.

In 1825, under threat of another French invasion and the restoration of slavery, Haitian officials signed the document which was to prove the beginning of the end for any hope of autonomy. The French king agreed to recognise Haiti’s independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. The ‘debt’ that Haiti recognised was incurred by the slaves when they deprived the French owners not only of land and equipment but of their human ‘property’.

... ‘Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood,’ the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher argued.

By the late 19th century, the United States had eclipsed France as a force in Haitian affairs. A US military occupation (1915-34) brought back corvée labour and introduced bombing from the air, while officials in Washington created the institutions that Haitians would have to live with: the army, above all, which now claims to have the country ‘in its hands’, was created by an act of the US Congress. Demobilised by Aristide in 1995, it never knew a non-Haitian enemy. It had plenty of internal enemies, however. Military-backed governments, dictatorships, chronic instability, repression, the heavy hand of Washington over all: this state of affairs continued throughout the 20th century.

I learned about Haiti’s history while working on medical projects on the country’s central plateau. When I first travelled there in 1983, the Duvalier family dictatorship had been in place for a quarter of a century. There was no dissent. The Duvaliers and their military dealt ruthlessly with any opposition, while the judiciary and the rest of the world looked the other way. Haiti was already known as the poorest country in the Western world, and those who ran it argued that force was required to police deep poverty.

By the mid-1980s, the hunger, despair and disease were beyond management. Baby Doc Duvalier, named ‘president for life’ at 19, fled in 1986. A first attempt at democratic elections, in 1987, led to massacres at polling stations. An army general declared himself in charge. In September 1988, the mayor of Port-au-Prince – a former military officer – paid a gang to set fire to a Catholic church as mass was being said. It was packed with people, 12 of whom died. At the altar was Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the nemesis of the dictatorship and the army. Aristide was a proponent of liberation theology, with its injunction that the Church proclaim ‘a preferential option for the poor’, but liberation theology had its adversaries: members of Reagan’s brains trust, meeting in 1980, declared it less Christian than Communist. ‘US policy,’ they said, ‘must begin to counter (not react against) . . . the "liberation theology” clergy.’

Aristide’s elevation from slum priest to presidential candidate took place against a background of right-wing death squads and threatened military coups. He rose quickly in the eyes of Haitians, but his stock plummeted in the United States. The New York Times, which relies heavily on informants who can speak English or French, had few kind words for him. ‘He’s a cross between the Ayatollah and Fidel,’ one Haitian businessman was quoted as saying. ‘If it comes to a choice between the ultra-left and the ultra-right, I’m ready to form an alliance with the ultra-right.’ Haitians knew, however, that Aristide would win any democratic election, and on 16 December 1990, he got 67 per cent of the vote in a field of 12 candidates. No run-off was required.

The United States might not have been able to prevent Aristide’s landslide victory, but there was plenty they could do to undermine him. The most effective method, adopted by the first Bush administration, was to fund both the opposition – their poor showing at the polls was no reason, it appears, to cut off aid to them – and the military. Declassified records now make it clear that the CIA and other US groups helped to create and fund a paramilitary group called FRAPH, which rose to prominence after a military coup that ousted Aristide in September 1991. Thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled overseas or across the border into the Dominican Republic. For the next three years Haiti was run by military-civilian juntas as ruthless as the Duvaliers.

In October 1994, under Clinton, the US military intervened and restored Aristide to power, with a little over a year of his term left to run. Although authorised by the UN, the restoration was basically a US operation. Then, seven weeks after Aristide’s return, Republicans took control of the Congress, and influential Republicans have worked ever since to block aid to Haiti or burden it with preconditions.

The aid coming through official channels was never very substantial: the US gave Haiti, per capita, one tenth of what it distributed in Kosovo. It is true that, as former US ambassadors and the Bush administration have recently claimed, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into Haiti – but not to the elected government. A great deal of it went to the anti-Aristide opposition. A lot also went to pay for the UN occupation, and Halliburton support services. There was little effort to rebuild schools, the healthcare infrastructure, roads, ports, telecommunications or airports ...

That the US and France undermined Aristide is not a fringe opinion. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the African Union have called for a formal investigation into his removal. ‘Most people around the world believe that Aristide’s departure was at best facilitated, at worst coerced by the US and France,’ Gayle Smith, a member of the National Security Council staff under Clinton, recently said.

Why such animus towards Haiti’s leader? Taking up the question of the historic French debt, Aristide declared that France ‘extorted this money from Haiti by force and . . . should give it back to us so that we can build primary schools, primary healthcare, water systems and roads.’ He did the maths, adding in interest and adjusting for inflation, to calculate that France owes Haiti $21,685,135,571.48 and counting. This figure was scoffed at by some of the French, who saw the whole affair as a farce mounted by their disgruntled former subjects; others, it’s increasingly clear, were insulted or angered when the point was pressed in diplomatic and legal circles.

Still, Aristide kept up the pressure. The figure of $21 billion was repeated again and again. The number 21 appeared all over the place in Haiti, along with the word ‘restitution’. On 1 January this year, during the bicentennial celebrations, Aristide announced he would replace a 21-gun salute with a list of the 21 things that had been done in spite of the embargo and that would be done when restitution was made. The crowd went wild. The French press by and large dismissed his comments as silly, despite the legal merits of his case. Many Haitians saw Aristide as a modern Toussaint l’Ouverture, a comparison that Aristide did not discourage. ‘Toussaint was undone by foreign powers,’ Madison Smartt Bell wrote in Harper’s in January, ‘and Aristide also had suffered plenty of vexation from outside interference.’

It’s usually easy to tell, in even the briefest conversation about Aristide, how your interlocutor feels about him. Opinion in Haiti is almost always referred to as ‘polarised’ in the US press, but this isn’t true in every sense. Elections and polls, even recent ones, show that the poor majority still support Aristide. It’s the middle classes and the traditional political elites who disagree about him, as well as people like me: non-Haitians who, for whatever reasons, concern themselves with that country’s affairs ...

It would be convenient for the traditional Haitian elites and their allies abroad if Aristide, who has been forced to preside over unimaginable penury, had been abandoned by his own people. But Gallup polls in 2002, the results of which were never disseminated, showed that, despite his faults, he is far and away Haiti’s most popular and trusted politician. ...

See also:

• "Clinton and the taming of Haiti" by José Antonio Gutiérrez D. on Anarkismo.net, November 12, 2009.
• "Securing disaster: The US repeats past mistakes in Haiti" by Peter Hallward in the The National, January 21, 2010.
• "Haiti: The Israeli Connection" on the Middle East Reality Check blog, January 16, 2010.

Labels: Clintons, Empire, Haiti, Ronald Reagan

The excerpts below are from James Mooney's The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991) 881-883. Mooney's text was originally published in 1896 as the second part of the fourteenth annual report of the US Bureau of Ethnology, 1892-93. The first excerpt refers to the massacre by troops of the 7th Cavalry--the late George A. Custer's old command--at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota on December 29, 1890. The second excerpt concerns a ballad written by one of the "Buffalo Soldiers" I mentioned in "Skins & Fighting for Uncle Scum" and also makes mention of the role of Indian soldiers in the final verse of the ballad.

The Indian scouts at Wounded Knee, like the Indian police at Grand river and Pine Ridge, were brave and loyal, as has been the almost universal rule with Indians when enlisted in the government service, even when called on, as were these, to serve against their own tribe and relatives. The prairie Indian is a born soldier, with all the soldier's pride of loyalty to duty, and may be trusted implicitly after he has once consented to enter the service. The scouts at Wounded Knee were Sioux, with Philip Wells as interpreter. Other Sioux scouts were ranging the country between the agency and the hostile camp in the Bad Lands, and acted as mediators in the peace negotiations which led to the final surrender. Fifty Cheyenne and about as many Crow scouts were also employed in the same section of country. Throughout the entire campaign the Indian scouts and police were faithful and received the warmest commendation of their officers. ...

On January 5 there was another encounter on Wounded Knee creek. A small detachment which had been sent out to meet a supply train coming into the agency found the wagons drawn up in a square to resist an attack made by a band of about 50 Indians. The soldiers joined forces with the teamsters, and by firing from behind the protection of the wagons succeeded in driving off the Indians and killing a number of their horses. The hostiles were reinforced, however, and a hard skirmish was kept up for several hours until more troops arrived from the agency about dark, having been sent in answer to a courier who managed to elude the attacking party. The troops charged on a gallop and the Indians retreated, having lost several killed and wounded, besides a number of their horses. (Colby, 7.)

Amid all these warlike alarms the gentle muse Calliope hovered over the field and inspired W. H. Prather, a colored private of troop I of the Ninth cavalry, to the production of the ballad given below, one of the few good specimens of American ballad poetry, and worthy of equal place with "Captain Lovewell's Fight," "Old Quebec," or anything that originated in the late rebellion. It became a favorite among the troops in camp and with the scattered frontiersmen of Dakota and Nebraska, being sung to a simple air with vigor and expression and a particularly rousing chorus, and is probably by this time a classic of the barracks. It is here reproduced verbatim from the printed slip published for distribution among the soldiers during the campaign.

A GHOST-DANCE BALLAD

THE INDIAN GHOST DANCE AND WAR

The Red Skins left their Agency, the Soldiers left their Post,
All on the strength of an Indian tale about Messiah's ghost
Got up by savage chieftains to lead their tribes astray;
But Uncle Sam wouldn't have it so, for he ain't built that way.
They swore that this Messiah came to them in visions sleep,
And promised to restore their game and Buffalos a heap,
So they must start a big ghost dance, then all would join their band,
And may be so we lead the way into the great Bad Land.

Chorus:

They claimed the shirt Messiah gave, no bullet could go through,
But when the Soldiers fired at them they saw this was not true.
The Medicine man supplied them with their great Messiah's grace,
And he, too, pulled his freight and swore the 7th hard to face.

About their tents the Soldiers stood, awaiting one and all,
That they might hear the trumpet clear when sounding General call
Or Boots and Saddles in a rush, that each and every man
Might mount in haste, ride soon and fast to stop this devilish band
But Generals great like Miles and Brooke don't do things up that way,
For they know an Indian like a book, and let him have his sway
Until they think him far enough and then to John they'll say,
"You had better stop your fooling or we'll bring our guns to play."

Chorus: They claimed the shirt, etc.

The 9th marched out with splendid cheer the Bad Lands to explo'e--
With Col. Henry at their head they never fear the foe;
So on they rode from Xmas eve 'till dawn of Xmas day ;
The Red Skins heard the 9th was near and fled in great dismay;
The 7th is of courage bold both officers and men,
But bad luck seems to follow them and twice has took them in;
They came in contact with Big Foot's warriors in their fierce might
This chief made sure he had a chance of vantage in the fight.

Chorus: They claimed the shirt, etc.

A fight took place, 'twas hand to hand, unwarned by trumpet
While the Sioux were dropping man by man--the 7th killed them all,
And to that regiment be said "Ye noble braves, well done,
Although you lost some gallant men a glorious fight you've won."
The 8th was there, the sixth rode miles to swell that great command
And waited orders night and day to round up Short Bull's band.
The Infantry marched up in mass the Cavalry's support,
And while the latter rounded up, the former held the fort.

Chorus: They claimed the shirt, etc.

E battery of the 1st stood by and did their duty well,
For every time the Hotchkiss barked they say a hostile fell.
Some Indian soldiers chipped in too and helped to quell the fray,
And now the campaign's ended and the soldiers marched away.
So all have done their share, you see, whether it was thick or thin,
And all helped break the ghost dance up and drive the hostiles in.
The settlers in that region now can breathe with better grace;
They only ask and pray to God to make John hold his base.

Chorus: They claimed the shirt, etc.

(W. H. Prather, I, 9th Cavalry).

See also:

• Quotable: "We believe in America"
• Green Berets: Who's the Coward?

Labels: Empire, history, identity, Indians, United States

My first response this morning to the news of Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was disbelief. My next response was to recall part of a story on I heard on NPR yesterday, entitled "Capture Or Kill? Lawyers Eye Options For Terrorists." Below is a relevant excerpt:

Given the difficulty of detaining high-value terrorists in the United States, Cuba, Afghanistan, black sites or foreign countries, another possibility exists.

"To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that they'll pick them up at all," says Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution and American University's Washington College of Law, who has written about these issues. "I think that we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture."

Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree that it has become so hard for the U.S. to detain people that in many instances, the U.S. government is killing them instead.

Last month, American forces staged a raid on a car in Somalia. The man inside the car was a suspected terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list. American troops did not seize him. Instead, helicopters fired on the car, and commandos retrieved his body.

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama has been widely described as "aspirational." It may be, however, that delusional is a more apt description in light of Obama's campaign promises and track record as president. Consider the following partial list:

• Candidate Obama pledged to expand the combat forces of the Marines and Army
• Candidate Obama pledged to escalate the war in Afghanistan
• President Obama authorized killer drone attacks in Pakistan in his very first week in office
• President Obama has not ended the US occupation of Iraq
• President Obama has not closed the Guantanamo prison
• President Obama has not ended the little discussed but deadly American military intervention in Somalia
• President Obama has been utterly unable to go beyond tepid, hollow rhetoric concerning murderous US-backed Israel
• President Obama has left "all options on the table" when it comes to US arm-twisting vis-a-vis Iran

With Nobel Peace Prize laureates like Obama who needs war mongers?

See also: "Professor Hakimi's Solution to Gitmo"

Labels: Afghanistan, drones, Empire, Iran, Iraq, Israel, militarism, Obama, Somalia, United States, War

We're not the enemy. We're not. We're on your side. We believe in America. That's why Indians have the highest percentage of [military] service of any ethnic group in America.

Source: Swil Kanim (Lummi) in A-Y-P: Indigenous Voices Reply, a film by Anna Laura Hoover (Aleut) and part of a larger exhibit by the same name.

A few days before viewing the film I asked a friend, who is also an enrolled member of the Flathead tribe, why he thought so many Indians served in the US military his response was "Survival."

In discussing the matter with another friend, I observed that high rates of military service in the conquering armies are an apparent characteristic of many conquered peoples such as White Southerners and Filipinos in the US military and the Gurkha and Scottish regiments in the British Army. The French Foreign Legion has also attracted large numbers of soldiers from French colonies. Going back further, many Roman Legions were also populated by non-Romans. Serving in a conquering army is a way of demonstrating (and being rewarded for) military prowess, valor, and loyalty to the dominant society and, yes, it can also be a survival tactic.

See also: "Skins & Fighting for Uncle Scum"

Labels: Empire, identity, Indians, quotations, United States

In all wars of liberation, some portion of the local population casts it lot with the foreign forces. Civil Air Patrol commander Long Nguyen's (pictured right) father was one of those people.

The Seattle Times reports: "Because his father had worked for U.S. forces, helping to find soldiers and airmen missing in action, his whole family was evacuated. They were among the first wave of Vietnamese refugees to come to Washington that summer [of 1975]."

I see a bitter irony in how Long Nguyen now makes his living: "His day job is a freelance mix: He flies private planes for several wealthy families who need [sic] a pilot to ferry them to the San Juans or up and down the coast ..."

Here's some background on the American war in Vietnam. Just months before the end of World War II, Japanese troops took control of an area that the French imperialists who had previously occupied it called Indochine française.

With the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the nationalist Viet Minh forces took control of parts of their homeland, which they called Việt Nam. Since 1941, the Viet Minh had enjoyed official support from the US government in fighting their common enemy, Japan, but that changed with the end of the war. The French wanted their colony back and, disregarding the Atlantic Charter, the US government supported the French. Before 1945 was over, the US was facilitating a French reconquest by transporting French soldiers to Vietnam on US troop transport ships.

In the "The Anti-War Movement We are Supposed to Forget," professor H. Bruce Franklin describes the period:

Those Americans who knew anything about Vietnam during World War II knew that the United States had been allied with the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese liberation movement led by Ho Chi Minh, and had actually provided some arms to their guerrilla forces, commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap. American fliers rescued by Giap's guerrillas testified to the rural population's enthusiasm for both the Viet Minh and the United States, which they saw as the champion of democracy, antifascism, and anti-imperialism. American officials and officers who had contact with Ho and the Viet Minh were virtually unanimous in their support and admiration. The admiration was mutual. In September 1945 the Viet Minh issued the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, which began with a long quotation from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The regional leaders of the O.S.S. (predecessor of the C.I.A.) and U.S. military forces joined in the celebration, with General Philip Gallagher, chief of the U.S. Military Advisory and Assistance Group, singing the Viet Minh's national anthem on Hanoi radio.

But in the following two months, the United States committed its first act of warfare against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. At least 8 and possibly 12 U.S. troopships were diverted from their task of bringing American troops home from World War II and instead began transporting U.S.-armed French troops and Foreign Legionnaires from France to recolonize Vietnam. The enlisted crewmen of these ships, all members of the U.S. Merchant Marine, immediately began organized protests. On arriving in Vietnam, for example, the entire crews of four troopships met together in Saigon and drew up a resolution condemning the U.S. government for using American ships to transport troops "to subjugate the native population" of Vietnam.

The full-scale invasion of Vietnam by French forces, once again equipped and ferried by the United States, began in 1946. An American movement against the war started to coalesce as soon as significant numbers of Americans realized that Washington was supporting France's war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.*

France's war ended with the ignominious defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; the US war continued to escalate until it, too, was defeated in 1973.

* A more complete description appears in Franklin's book, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (UMass Pr. 2001) pp. 49-50.

Labels: Empire, history, War

In "Robot Wars," Eric Stoner writes:

Predator drones armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles have regularly bombed Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, and their use is skyrocketing. In 2008, 71 Predators flew 138,404 combat hours — a 94 percent increase over the year before, according to a recent presentation by U.S. Air Force Col. Eric Mathewson. And over the last year, drones flown largely by the CIA have launched missile attacks inside Pakistan more than 40 times. Rather than reconsider this deadly policy, President Obama has become an enthusiastic backer. Since his inauguration, he has authorized 11 such attacks that have collectively killed over 145 people, many of them civilians, and sparked large protests within Pakistan.

I would add that Obama--the "peace candidate"--authorized UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) attacks on Pakistan in his very first week in office.

See also: "The Great Robot Race"

Labels: drones, Empire, militarism, Obama, Pakistan, robots, technology, War

Not long ago I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's June 1978 commencement address to Harvard University entitled A World Split Apart. Solzhenitsyn's obvious strength was his writing on life in Russia. And while he was also a keen observer of the West, he did not always see it so clearly. His understandable anti-Communism sometimes blinded him to the reality of American imperialism.

For instance, he chastised the "American intelligentsia" for the US defeat in Vietnam never understanding that the US role was indefensible by his own standards. Sounding the alarm, he claimed, "a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over [America]." He decried the materialism, irresponsible freedom, and humanism of the West and the US, in particular, never understanding that these were, in large part, symptoms not causes.

At least in 1978, he failed understand that Americans are not free but the unwitting slaves of a sophisticated and pervasive propaganda system. Which is, in turn, part of a larger system or constellation of systems which are life-destroying on scales large and small and manifest in America's culture of death and the "The Combine" of Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or the "Domination System" described by Walter Wink.

In any case, the passage below from A World Split Apart has much to commend itself in terms of understanding the law in America. It is noteworthy that his examples of the failure to exercise "Voluntary self-restraint" are not individuals as one would expect to hear from many American commentators but they are corporations.

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.)

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is also less than worthy of man. A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

Source: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A World Split Apart. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978) pp. 15-19.

Labels: art and literature, communism, critical thinking, Empire, Justice, Ken Kesey, law, quotations