http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39371.htm
U.S. “Humanitarian” Bombing of Iraq: A Redundant Presidential Ritual
By Glenn Greenwald. August 10, 2014 "ICH"
(3) “Humanitarianism” is the pretty packaging in which all wars – even the most blatantly aggressive ones – are wrapped, but it is almost never the actual purpose. There are often numerous steps the U.S. could take to advance actually humanitarian goals, but those take persistence and resources, and entail little means of control, and are thus usually ignored in favor of blowing things and people up with Freedom Bombs.
(4) Note how even the pretenses of constitutional democracy are now dispensed with: there is a reasonable legal debate over legality, but in essence: the President has the power to order bombing of Iraq because he decides it should happen.
(5) Perhaps having Israel and the U.S. simultaneously bombing Arabs in different countries – yet again – will create some extremely negative consequences?
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real bogeyman emerged, Obama ignored it, and so did the U.S. media, which instead followed Obama’s warmongering gaze to Ukraine, while plagiarizing the president’s endless excuse-making for Israel’s genocidal conduct in Gaza
Obama wants to intervene for “humanitarian” reasons to fight ISIS. But the actual reason that ISIS attracted Obama’s missiles is that the terror group did something unforgivable: It has finally threatened “U.S. interests,” whereas before the interests of ISIS and Obama were perfectly aligned.
Several articles on Gaza. Second article link, showed US media lied, outright about Israel.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/11/the-palestinian-holocaust-in-gaza/
August 11, 2014
A Repugnant New Form of Fascism
The Palestinian Holocaust in Gaza French agency AFP reported August 2, “The war between the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas and Israel has caused the deaths of close to 1,800 Palestinians,… the destruction of thousands of homes, and ruined an economy which was already weakened,” although it does not indicate, of course, who initiated the terrible war.
Added later, “… As of Saturday at midday the Israeli offensive had killed 1,712 Palestinians and injured 8,900. The United Nations was able to verify the identities of 1,117 dead, in their majority civilians … UNICEF counted at least 296 dead minors.”
“The United Nations estimates …some 58,900 persons homeless in the Gaza Strip.”
“Ten of the 32 hospitals were closed and another 11 damaged.”
“This Palestinian enclave of 362 km² does not have the infrastructure needed for 1.8 million inhabitants, above all in terms of the provision of electricity and water.”
“According to the IMF, the rate of unemployment surpasses 40% in the Gaza Strip, territory subjected to an Israeli blockade since 2006. In 2000, unemployment was 20%, and in 2011, 30%. More than 70% of the population depends on humanitarian aid during normal periods, according to Gisha.
The Israeli government declared a humanitarian truce in Gaza at 07:00 GMT on Monday, nevertheless within a few hours, it broke the truce attacking a house, injuring 30 persons, in their majority women and children, and an eight-year-old girl died.
In the dawn hours of this same day, 10 Palestinians died as a result of Israeli attacks in all of Gaza and the number of Palestinians murdered has already increased to 2,000.
The killing has reached the point that, “French Minister of Foreign Affairs Laurent Fabius stated this Monday that Israel’s right to security does not justify the massacre of civilians taking place.”
The Nazi genocide of Jews outraged all the earth’s peoples. Why does this government believe that the world will be insensitive to the macabre genocide which today is being perpetuated against the Palestinian people? Perhaps it is expected that the complicity of the U.S. empire in this shameful massacre will be ignored? New, indispensable forces have emerged. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – establishing links with Latin America and the majority of countries in the Caribbean and Africa struggling for development – constitute the forces which in our era are willing to collaborate with the rest of the world’s countries, without excluding the United States, Europe or Japan."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/08/the-decline-of-americas-moral-integrity/
The Decline of America’s Moral IntegrityIn an illuminating chapter called “America’s Secret Foreign Policy and the Arrogance of Power,” Lewis provides a timetable of recent clandestine operations, beginning his chapter with the following remark: “Since the 1890s, the United States has deposed or helped to depose more than a dozen foreign governments, often for the benefit of US commercial interests operating in those countries.” Allende’s overthrow, Letelier’s assassination (in Washington, D.C., for God’s 935-lies-nonfiction-book-lewissake!), Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador. And the way these surgical procedures can be continued? Deny, cover-up, obfuscate and when nothing else works, attack journalists. Couldn’t be more damning about our leaders’ hidden foreign policy decisions and what they continue to do.
Lewis’s take on journalists and their reluctance to pursue corporate malfeasance is particularly hopeless. Big corporations have so much money that they can undertake massive lawsuits against newspapers, knowing quite well that the newspapers cannot afford to fight back. There’s the additional conflict of lost revenue from corporate advertising that further compromises what gets published in the first place. Thus, few newspapers are willing to enter into what may be a prolonged battle against unlimited corporate money. He cites, however, the Readers’ Digest as an interesting exception to anti-smoking articles. For years (until it ran into its own financial limitations), the Readers’ Digest printed no advertising, so there was no worry about lost income from the tobacco companies. This revealing chapter also includes an overview of the corporate smear campaign against Rachel Carson before and after the publication of Silent Spring.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/08/how-us-leaders-aid-and-abet-israeli-war-crimes/
Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
How US Leaders Aid and Abet Israeli War Crimes"
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/08/the-unintended-consequences-of-genocide/ Twitter users have spread around the globe graphic pictures and information that the news media didn’t dare report.
The demonstrations, cancellations of Israel-sponsored events, the growing BDS movement and the increasing awareness, thanks in large part to social media, of Israel’s horrific crimes, cannot forever be ignored by the governments of the people who show their opposition to Israel by supporting these actions.
The one nation that seems to be the slowest in changing its sour tune, and condemning the unspeakable human rights violations that Israel perpetrates, is, not surprisingly, the United States. As this writer has said previously, the U.S. sees human rights as all well and good, as long as they don’t interfere with the U.S.’s strategic or financial interests. One must remember that, just between the beginning of 2012 and the end of 2013, pro-Israel lobby groups donated over $8 million dollars to Congressional and presidential candidates. Over the last couple of decades, these lobbies have donated tens of millions of dollars to candidates. And there are few more self-serving bodies in the world than the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. So what if babies, sleeping in their cribs, are savagely ripped apart by weapons that violate international law? Criticizing such murders might reduce the size of the check from some Israeli lobby or other. No, the risk there is far too great.
So, while barely murmuring a whisper in opposition to Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, the U.S. finances it."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/08/the-idfs-hannibal-protocol-and-two-criminally-insane-governments/indiscriminately killed over 150 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including many women and children. Indeed, the paper states that the IDF “…shelled and bombed houses and their inhabitants indiscriminately, and as they tried to flee homes, hit them with shells and bombs in the streets.” The fatal bombing of a targeted UN-operated school in Rafah, And if the Israeli government is criminally insane, so is the US government for uncritically and unthinkingly backing it."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/08/israel-gaza-and-the-false-face-of-barack-obama/This is yet another reminder to seriously progressive citizens never to look for “leadership,” moral or otherwise, from politicians"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39370.htm
bloodthirsty ISIS is comprised of fighters who were first enabled by the misbegotten Bush maneuver known as the “surge”; then armed and trained by the CIA for the campaign against Assad; and now brandish the best weapons that any ramshackle jihadist group ever had.
And yet America’s “peace” President is sending the bombers back in because there is a “humanitarian crisis” involving a religious sect no American has ever heard of, stranded on a mountain top that has nothing to do with the security and safety of the citizens of Lincoln NE and Spokane WA.
Has not the American war machine turned the entirety of Mesopotamia and the Levant into a humanitarian crisis—of which this is only a tiny manifestation? Isn’t it time to at least stop fueling the blowback?