Posted by Addison dePitt

Nikki Haley: Damn the UN Human Rights Council and the Rest of You Too

ANN GARRISON—The UNHRC is composed of 47 members elected to three year terms within five geographic groups: Africa, Central America and Caribbean, Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, and Western European and Other States including the US and Australia. The seats are rarely contested; nations from the various groups just swap votes and take turns. Only the Asia Pacific seat was contested this year.

UNHRC resolutions are neither legally binding nor enforceable, so it’s just a forum, but occasionally it makes news. This year the UNHRC story in the headlines has been that the US might quit the Council over its “anti-Israel bias”—as it now has— before its three-year term expires in 2019.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

A Lover Of Death Gets His Wish :  Neocon Charles Krauthammer Dead At 68

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The American supremacist vision of unipolarity Krauthammer based his worldview upon has led to entire nations being collapsed under the false pretenses of spreading freedom and democracy, when in reality they were first and foremost geared at preserving that very unipolarity as a goal in and of itself. US-led wars of aggression are about power and dominance; believing that the most powerful empire in the history of civilization isn’t driven primarily by a hunger for power is like believing that Jeff Bezos is uninterested in money or Kim Kardashian is uninterested in fame. This insatiable power hunger is what Krauthammer dedicated his life’s work to feeding, no matter how many lives it cost.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

Reliving Terror

ROWAN WOLF—This is a policy deliberate in its cruelty to whip a “base” to hate these created “others” who it is claimed are coming to “infest” the United States. It is a deliberately cruel policy where the horror is being used to push through two other policy goals – to build an expensive and dangerous wall, and to recraft immigration into the United States to effectively ban the “brown” people from crossing into the United States.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

Slow Suicide and the Abandonment of the World

ED CURTIN—So yes, I do think most people are victims.  No one chooses their parents, or to be born into poverty, or to be discriminated against for one’s race, etc.  No one chooses to have their genuine experience poisoned from childhood.  No one chooses to be born into a mad society.  This is all true.  Some are luckier than others.  Suicides, fast and slow, are victims.  But not just victims.  This is not about blame, but understanding.  For those who commit to lives of slow suicide, to the squelching of their true selves and their consciences in the face of a rapacious and murderous society, there is always the chance they can break with the norm and go sane.  Redemption is always possible.  But it primarily involves overcoming the fear of death, a fear that manifests itself in the extreme need to preserve one’s life, so-called social identity, and sense of self by embracing social conventions…

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Posted by Addison dePitt

Anti-Communist ‘Academia’ ALL LIES – Interview with Prof Grover Furr (Video)

From George Orwell to Robert Conquest to Solzenytsin, very few people have bothered to check the sources on which they base their sweeping anti-communist ‘conclusions’. Professor Grover Furr, a talented linguist and Historian, with an interest in the USSR, Stalin and the communist movement, has done just that, and it is his evaluation of ALL the sources and ALL the footnotes that allows him to reach an authoritative opinion on the true value of these ‘bibles of anti-communism. It turns out that the overwhelmingly reactionary Polish and Ukrainian sources are ALL biased, or outright fabrications.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

Internment Camps for Child Migrants 

R S AHTHION—It is of course no surprise that the Americans’ response to a humanitarian crisis they created be the disgusting internment camps reminiscent of World war 2.

The thousands of people turning up at the borders of the United States are the refugees from capitalism and a violent foreign policy led by the leaders of the United States (Democrats or Republicans). Therefore that border is not worthy of respect.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

Exposure to mainstream media: the daily insult

P. GREANVILLE—Every single day, from cradle to grave, the American population is subjected to a nonstop barrage of lies, omissions of truths and outrageous distortions, with the sole purpose of maintaining the nation’s allegiance to the imperialist/capitalist status quo anchored in constant war and unstoppable inequality. The American system of disinformation, evolved over more than a century, fools just about everyone with its apparent diversity of sources. After all the US has literally thousands of “news” outlets, from radio stations to tv stations, newspapers and other channels, and people reckon that this enormous quantity of media must automatically guarantee a vigorous debate of the issues at hand and the presentation of all viewpoints. They could not be more wrong. This diversity is an illusion.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

THE AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM MYTH AND THE SELLING OF U.S. DOMINATION

GEOFFREY O’NEILL—Most Americans are unaware of the amount of human suffering the U.S. government has inflicted on others throughout the world, especially post 9/11. We are incessantly told it is our duty to support the troops and our leaders who invade, bomb or otherwise intervene in other nations. The motives offered might be to stop genocide, to take down a maniacal despot, or to spread democracy and American values. Our government purportedly acts with reluctance as well as with compassion, respect for others, and good intent. We are reminded that the troops keep us safe, all the while helping spread the American way of life to a needy world. Why? It is because we are “exceptional.”

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Posted by Addison dePitt

Can the Green Party Be Saved From Liberal Tokenism and Black Opportunism? We’ll See.

BRUCE DIXON—In my May 30 column, Why Our Green Parties Haven’t Taken Off, I noted that the GP does get a few important things absolutely correct, and briefly discussed some of its defects and difficulties as well – foggy politics, no organizing methodology, addiction to the models of Democrats and Republicans, and more. It’s a work in progress, often way more work than progress. Some of us are committed to transforming the Green Party into a 21st century left and socialist party, eventually capable of partnering in labor and other organizing ventures and competing for actual power.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

Freedom Rider: Democrats Unhinged by Korea

MARGARET KIMBERLEY—The Democrats like war, interventions and United States hegemony. They always have. If anyone wants proof they need only look at their collective hissy fit regarding the Trump and Kim summit. Part of the reaction is caused by fear of Trump getting credit for a foreign policy achievement. But Democrats are also true believers in imperialism. The last thing they want to see is any reduction in the American military presence in Korea or anywhere else.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

BAR Book Forum: Stephen Gowans’ “Patriots, Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom”

ROBERTO SIRVENT—US foreign policy largely shaped what Korea is and has become since 1945, and it is impossible to understand Korea without first understanding US foreign policy. US foreign policy is set, not by the broad public acting through its elected representatives to serve broad public interests, but by an elite based in the business and especially finance and banking communities to serve their sectional interests.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

US Navy planning to build military camps to jail 120,000 immigrants

ALEC ANDERSEN—The release of detailed plans for the construction of military detention centers throughout the western and southern states, with the capacity to detain massive numbers of undocumented workers fleeing the violence and economic devastation that American imperialism has produced in Central America, represents a new stage in the ruling class’s turn toward authoritarian rule.

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Posted by Addison dePitt

WAR & REVOLUTION2

An interview with Dr. John Ackerman – professor of law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), columnist with La Jornada newspaper and Proceso Magazine, and a frequent contributor to international media such as The New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique and Foreign Policy – regarding the myth of the transition to democracy in Mexico, the imminence of fraud in the upcoming presidential election, and the promise of a progressive government led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

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