[Photo: At the Standing Rock #WaterProtectors barricade. Credit: UnicornRiot.]

Police & Military Attack Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp

=By=  Unicorn Riot

Oct 28th 1:20am CDT New video below shows police attacking Oceti Sakowin Treaty Camp with pepper spray, less-lethal rounds used at close range, batons, LRAD, and tazers.

100+ Militarized Police Raiding #NoDAPL Resistance Camp Blocking Pipeline’s Path

=By=  DemocracyNow!

In Cannonball, North Dakota, over 100 police with military equipment are advancing on a resistance camp established by Native American water protectors in the path of the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Photos and multiple videos posted to Facebook Live depict over 100 officers in riot gear lined up across North Dakota’s Highway 1806, flanked by multiple mine-resistant ambush protected military vehicles (MRAPs), a sound cannon, an armored truck and a bulldozer. There have also been reports from water protectors that the police presence includes multiple snipers. Police appear to be evicting the camp in order to clear the way for the Dakota Access pipeline company to continue construction — which was active at times on Thursday just behind the police line.

Police advance towards blockade on Hwy 1806 to evict #OcetiSakowin from 1851 treaty land and pave way for the #DakotaAccessPipeline. #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/VRQAGRdN10

— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) October 27, 2016

@democracynow @HillaryClinton the world needs to hear from you on this

— Adrian Hough (@Adey800) October 27, 2016

Cody Hall of Red Warrior Camp told Democracy Now! that behind the line of police, the Dakota Access pipeline company is carrying out construction with cranes and bulldozers on the sacred tribal burial site where on September 3, unlicensed Dakota Access security guards unleashed dogs and pepper spray against Native Americans.

PHOTO: Just behind militarized police line on Highway 1806 in North Dakota, Dakota Access pipeline company actively continues construction pic.twitter.com/CQgYXV3JGn

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016

Water protectors have set up a blockade of the highway using cars, tires and fire. Elders are also leading prayer ceremonies.

PHOTO: Just behind militarized police line on Highway 1806 in North Dakota, Dakota Access pipeline company actively continues construction pic.twitter.com/CQgYXV3JGn

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016

Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network reported in a Facebook Live video posted just before 2 p.m. local time that police have begun arresting water protectors in the ongoing standoff. Sacheen Seitcham of the West Coast Women Warrior Media Cooperative told Democracy Now! police have used tasers against water protectors, and that she was hit with a concussion grenade.

The frontline camp sits directly in the proposed path of the Dakota Access pipeline on private property purchased recently by the Dakota Access pipeline company for $18 million. In establishing this frontline camp, water protectors cited an 1851 treaty, which they say makes the entire area unceded sovereign land under the control of the Sioux. Over the weekend, police arrested more than 120 people in a peaceful march to this site during which police deployed tear gas and used rubber bullets to shoot down drones the water protectors were using to document police activity.

Ahead of today’s apparent police raid, the Federal Aviation Administration also issued a temporary no-fly zone for the airspace above the resistance camps for all aircraft except for those used by law enforcement. This order means Native Americans can no longer fly drones to document police activity, but the police can continue to fly their surveillance drones and helicopters.

The apparent police raid of the resistance camp comes only minutes before Standing Rock Sioux youth flooded the Hillary Clinton campaign headquarters in New York City to demand Clinton oppose the Dakota Access pipeline.

As police in ND seem poised to raid #NoDAPL camp, Standing Rock youth flood Clinton campaign HQ to demand she oppose Dakota Access pipeline pic.twitter.com/4ixgjiuGpk

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) October 27, 2016

Militarized Police Are Cracking Down on Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters

=By= Zoë Carpenter from The Nation

After a weekend of mass arrests, people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline are preparing for another clash with a growing and increasingly militarized police force near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. On Sunday, demonstrators set up a new camp, called Winter Camp, in the pathway of pipeline construction, on what they consider unceded territory belonging to them under the 1851 Laramie Treaty. But Dakota Access LLC, the pipeline developer, said in a statement that they would be “removed from the land,” which the company purchased from a local rancher last month. Police said on Wednesday that they are prepared to carry out that threat. “It’s obvious we have the resources, we have the manpower, to go down there and end this,” Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said in an interview.

As the prospect of a raid on the Winter Camp looms, human-rights groups are increasingly concerned about law enforcement’s use of force against peaceful pipeline protesters (who call themselves “water protectors”), as well as journalists and legal observers. Demonstrators reported being pepper sprayed, beaten with batons, and strip searched in custody during the weekend’s arrests. Journalists were also arrested, and had their equipment confiscated.

In a Facebook post, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier described Saturday’s demonstration as a “riot,” and wrote that the “situation clearly illustrates what we have been saying for weeks, that this protest is not peaceful or lawful.” But it wasn’t immediately clear what he meant by a riot: The photo that accompanied the Facebook post showed protesters walking calmly through a field carrying banners and signs. Video footage showed people standing together, backing up as police approached. The only supposedly aggressive acts that the sheriff’s department described in any specific form included that two arrows were shot towards law enforcement, one officer was spit on, and that a drone that protesters were using to monitor police activity “attacked” a helicopter.

On Sunday, the Morton County Sheriff called for additional law-enforcement personnel from outside North Dakota. Officers from at least six other states—Wisconsin, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, Indiana, and Nebraska—have arrived so far. In his call for more resources, the sheriff cited “escalated unlawful tactics by individuals protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.” State and local officials also requested, and received, temporary flight restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration in a seven-mile radius around the protest camps, which may be an attempt to keep away news helicopters, as it was during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

“We have heard reports of escalation [from law enforcement], and we continue to be concerned with a number of issues,” said Tarah Demant, the senior director of Amnesty International’s Identity and Discrimination Unit. She cited the “sheer number” of police that have been brought into the area; their use of military-style equipment including riot and camouflage gear, semi-automatic weapons, and armored vehicles; and the force that they’re using to make arrests. “If police are making arrests—for example, for trespassing—they must be done in a way that upholds the rights of the people who are being arrested. And they need to be commensurate with the crime. The idea that police need to come out with pepper spray…is worrisome,” Demant said.

Demant is also concerned with rhetoric coming out of the Morton County Sheriff’s office. The department has repeatedly emphasized that protesters are violent, though there is little evidence to back up its claim. In September, for instance, Kirchmeier spread a rumor that demonstrators were threatening to use pipe bombs against officers. “We’ve seen this in multiple places across the world, and in dictatorships. Declaring that something is a riot is a way to shut down protests,” Demant said. “If there is a riot, then police or authorities have to provide evidence of that.” She said the response from North Dakota officials fits a pattern of increasing militarization of law enforcement across the country, but that it also echoes a long history of official, state-sanctioned violence against indigenous people.

Law enforcement officials have said that they are only responding to illegal activity on private property. “We’re having our hand forced…. we have to defend rule of law, and we have to make those arrests,” Sheriff Laney said in the Wednesday interview. But Jennifer Cook, the policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, said that, while trespassing is illegal, it’s not a crime that warrants a militarized response. “Even if [demonstrators] are on private land, and the private landowner requests that law enforcement eject them, it is in no way justified for law enforcement to come out and use excessive force against them,” Cook said. She said that officials have been “ramping up” the seriousness of the charges they’re filing against protesters (and against journalists: Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman was arrested on a “riot” charge). She sees that as an attempt to “justify the militarized response,” rather than a reflection of demonstrators’ actually acting aggressively themselves.

On Saturday, Standing Rock Sioux chairman David Archambault II called on the Department of Justice to investigate the “strong-arm tactics, abuses and unlawful arrests by law enforcement” in North Dakota. Though officials have consistently denied that they’ve used excessive force, on Wednesday the Morton County sheriff’s office did admit that the dog handlers whose animals attacked protesters in September “were not properly licensed to do security work in the state of North Dakota.” It took nearly two months for them to reach that conclusion.

Author Name Bio

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

=By= Anna Feigenbaum

From the Force Science Institute in Mankato, Minnesota to the ecological reserve outside Rio de Janeiro that houses Condor Non-Lethal Technologies’ police training center, the “use of force” industry has grown into a worldwide marketplace. Beginning on October 9, Hoffman Estates will host the five-day conference of the Illinois Tactical Officers Association, or ITOA. To greet them, a coalition of community groups and organizations from the Chicago area are assembling under the banner #StopITOA. These diverse groups, including AFSC-Chicago, CAIR-Chicago, Assata’s Daughters, Black Lives Matter-Chicago, the Arab American Action Network and War Resisters League, argue that government officials should prioritize spending for human needs not for militarization and violence.

Racial and ethnic fears and prejudices are deeply bound up in law enforcement anxieties over control and their use of excessive force. The coalition organizing around the ITOA conference are particularly concerned about this year’s keynote speaker, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, who is a regular talking head on Fox News known for his Islamophobic rhetoric, and was a consultant to Donald Trump. According to a recent expose by journalist Sarah Lazare, among other extremist claims, he has argued for the tracking and monitoring of Syrian refugees.

Speakers like Gorka “depend on and nourish cultures of fear,” said Jesse Solomon of the War Resisters League. “This fear preys on a growing vulnerability across many marginalized communities and is then used to justify militarism and policing, leaving people’s actual needs unaddressed.”

Why protest SWAT conventions?

The ITOA conference brings together tactical officers and first responders from across the state of Illinois, as well as further afield. This includes special response teams (that are usually referred to under the umbrella term SWAT) from the Illinois State Police and the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System, as well as SWAT from major cities and nearby states.

With workshops, keynote speakers and product exhibition halls, these conferences serve as a site for use of force training, knowledge exchange and business transactions. While many community organizations and the Police Executive Research Forum agree that courses in de-escalation and social work could improve policing, the trainings on offer at these tactical conferences focus on weapons skills development and promote combative mindsets that see community streets as battlegrounds. Exhibiting vast arsenals of military-grade guns, Tasers and riot control gear, the ITOA conference begs the question: Is this really what the country needs right now? As Solomon explained, these conferences are sites “that market masculinity, defense industry solutions and militarized mentalities.” In a time of tension, anger and mistrust, should use of force be what the police are peddling?

What funds this use of force industry?

Brimming with public-private partnerships, events like the ITOA conference and the use of force industry more broadly are largely supported by taxpayers through government grant and funding schemes.

“Police militarization conventions and SWAT trainings are happening 365 days a year, all over the world,” Solomon said. “In the United States, they are where the arms industry meets law enforcement and emergency response, with the federal government footing much of the bill.”

One of these schemes, the Pentagon’s much-debated 1033 program, was set up in the 1990s to transfer disused military equipment to law enforcement agencies. The program facilitated police departments in small and large cities, universities and even schools in receiving everything from armored helicopters to assault rifles. By late 2014, over $5 billion in equipment had been transferred from the military to law enforcement agencies before President Obama set restrictions on the program.

In addition to this hardware funding program, there are also schemes that provide money for use of force training, including Homeland Security’s Urban Areas Security Initiative, or UASI. This funding program “assists high-threat, high-density Urban Areas in efforts to build and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism.” For 2016, $580 million was earmarked for 29 “high threat, high-density” areas, with 25 percent of that funding designated for training.

By parceling out millions for counter-terrorism initiatives, civil service agencies (including the police and other emergency services) are encouraged to frame their funding needs in militarized terms and to enroll their officers in high conflict-based training. According to Hoda Katebi, communications coordinator for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, such training can contribute to the use of excessive force on people of color in the community.

“Just two months ago CAIR-Chicago filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against members of the Chicago Police Department on behalf of a young female Muslim student,” Katebi said. “She was physically attacked, publicly strip-searched and humiliated, and falsely arrested, among other abuses. One of the officers involved in this case professed to have received counter-terrorism training.”

In some states local organizations like Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System, or ILEAS, work as a clearinghouse for national government funding and equipment management and transfers. Supported by this Homeland Security money, the ILEAS works with over 95 percent of officers and deputies in Illinois and doles out funding to more than 900 organizations. In addition to the $15 million of SWAT equipment it has purchased, ILEAS funds officers and departments to partake in conferences and trainings.

The training and equipment awarded to law enforcement agencies often does not match their size or the reality of crime in their community. Using school shootings and terror attacks as justification for always being prepared for the worst 365 days a year, small departments, rural towns, universities and schools are buying up both equipment and use of force training. Jonathan Blanks from the Cato Institute’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project said that the problem comes “when officers get new toys.” Because SWAT or tactical equipment is expensive to maintain, police wanting to keep their toys must justify the expense, so they create opportunities and use them for things like minor drug raids. “This feeds a warrior mentality that can fuel aggressiveness and antagonism when deployed in a community,” Blanks said.

The College of Lake County Police Department, where ITOA Vice President and SWAT trainer Ed Mohn is commander, sees very few violent offenses occur, yet dozens of hours of heavily armed training were provided to staff in 2015. The amount of time devoted to firearm training at the college was much greater than training in trauma or other kinds of community and social services that police are far more likely to be called out to deal with, especially in an educational setting with young people.

Who profits off police violence?

This public money for equipment and training funnels out of government budgets into the pocketbooks of private corporations and “use of force” entrepreneurs. Like many major events in other industries, tactical officer conferences and expos receive corporate sponsorship. This year the ITOA conference in Illinois is primarily sponsored by Safariland Training Group.

Under various company names, Safariland has long been in the police equipment business. Begun as a body armor company in 1964, the company expanded in the mid-1990s under the leadership of Warren B. Kanders by purchasing other equipment suppliers. By the early 2000s, Kanders’s company was a major player in the national and international police markets, offering a “one stop shop” for outfitting and arming police forces. In 2008, the company was purchased by British military contractor BAE Systems, but was quickly sold back to Kanders in 2012. The period between 2008 and 2012 saw a number of corruption lawsuits against the company. Since 2012 Kanders has continued to expand the now rebranded Safariland Group.

By offering branded trainings at tactical officer conferences, companies like Safariland are able to showcase and demonstrate their weapons. Much like testing out apps that are offered exclusively by Apple or Android, this pairing of weapons demos and trainings is designed to create brand loyalty and lock customers in. Commercial benefits, like on-the-day purchase discounts, loyalty card schemes and insider updates are just as prevalent, if not more so, in the police weapons business as they are in other industries.

In addition to primary sponsorship from the Safariland Training Group, the ITOA conference will also host a number of other for-profit businesses that sell tactical weapons and equipment. Among them are Sage Control Ordinance and Sage International, which sells weapons like tear gas and rubber bullets, alongside their range of enhanced battle rifles. Also present will be Ultimate Training Munitions, a British company partnered with the NRA that specializes in non-lethal “safety” ammunition for weapons training. While this focus on less-lethal products might look at first glance like an alternative to excessive force culture, companies like Ultimate Training Munitions are instead a breeding ground for increased violence, allowing for wider usage of guns through less-lethal training. This is why it is beneficial for the NRA to partner with them.

Because these corporate-police business deals often take place beyond the public eye, connecting the dots between private interests and police use of force can be difficult. Journalist Matt Stroud began following these money flows for his project Official Police Business, which collects data and journalism “about the companies selling technology and weapons to cops — and the machinations police officials go through to squeeze those products into police budgets.”

According to Stroud, “If no one’s paying attention to the particulars of those sales pitches — or monitoring the resulting business deals — corruption can result, as well as dangerous weapons ending up on the belts and in the cruisers of police officers all over the country.”

Use of force training

There are also independent and small business trainers. It is common for ex-military officers who went into police work to become members of SWAT teams and tactical squads. Other times, officers with security or athletic backgrounds might choose this route. Some of these officers go on to become tactical trainers. These trainers can lead courses locally, nationally or internationally, depending on what certifications they have. There is a wide array of certification courses available to police, from hand-to-hand combat techniques to specialized rifle equipment.

As in other industries, training can come with both social and financial benefits. Trainers are often well-respected, travel a lot, get offered additional speaking and writing opportunities as “thought leaders.” Most importantly, they get paid fees in addition to their usual salaries. And decause officers are civil servants, they have set contract hours, opening up time for working second or even third jobs. ITOA trainings on offer include active shooter drills, “urban tactics” for city-based sieges, a variety of rifle and pistol trainings, less-lethal certifications and use of force warrant servicing.

Always on duty?

While many use of force gurus train officers to take on a combatant attitude in everyday duties, a look at what is happening inside police culture suggests a different story needs to be told. Reluctance to address the traumas associated with the violence of police culture has resulted in what police studies researchers call an epidemic of off-duty violence, abuse, alcoholism, depression, PTSD and suicide.

These kinds of tactical trainings and the promotion of a warrior mentality produce police who are “always on duty.” As ITOA founding member and president Jeff Chudwin wrote for ITOA News in 2013, “I have always taught that ‘off duty, does not mean off watch.’ Keep your gear close to hand, always armed with spare ammo, and a plan.”

An eight-month-long investigation by the Chicago Tribune in 2008, found that one in every four police shootings occurred off duty. More recent data from the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project suggests that little has changed, with over 40 percent of recorded reports of police misconduct in 2015 occurring off duty.

“We are trying to point out the number of people killed by police off duty,” said Debbie Southorn, the Wage Peace program associate AFSC-Chicago. “Many of these shootings involve police lies and cover-ups and no real consequences for the cop involved.”

Authoritarian training styles and repeated training exercises in the use of coercive force are also linked to a “spillover” of violence at home. Police have much higher rates of domestic and child abuse in the family than the general population. While empirical data is limited due to the failure of law enforcement to monitor its crimes or provide public figures, a major study conducted by the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Center for Women and Policing in the early 2000s suggested that the rate of domestic abuse in policing is up to four times higher than the national average, with 40 percent of families experiencing abuse of some kind. More recent data from criminologist Philip Stinson and his team’s research, as well as from the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project, suggest that at least one in every five cases of police crimes are for domestic and family abuse.

Silent circles of trauma?

This spillover of abuse from training to the streets to inside the home is linked with depression and PTSD. In the recent book “Police Suicide: Is Police Culture Killing Our Officers?” Ron Rufo, a long-time Chicago police officer and advocate for reform in police training, reports that for every one officer killed in the line of duty, three take their own lives.

Reflecting on this epidemic of violence within police culture, campaigners both inside and outside of law enforcement have long argued that the suppression of emotion and emphasis on eliminating weakness in order to always be in control can have damaging and violent effects on officers, their loved ones and the communities they serve. “The training tactics that are presented to new recruits,” Rufo argues, are designed to keep them alive on the streets. But this combination of survival skills, a control mentality and a belt full of loaded weapons, can leave an officer, “unable to survive his own distorted emotions and crumbling sense of well-being.”

While the problem of PTSD and suicide in military veterans is now openly discussed (due to the ceaseless activism of organizations after the Vietnam War), it is still seen as largely taboo to mention the effects of trauma in relation to policing, violence and use of force. This current reluctance to confront excessive force not only as a problem of institutionalized racism and violence, but as a psychological epidemic, limits the ability for any real change to occur.

Challenging use of force cultures

While the talking heads on TV rarely pause to take account of this complexity, the public spotlight now on police violence offers a moment of opportunity. People are paying real attention to the voices calling for new approaches to police use of force.

The coalition of groups that will be protesting the conference in Hoffman Estates are calling for the community to #StopITOA. Southorn says there are many ways to get involved and support the movement, whether it is by donating time for support work or taking part in a range of pressure-based actions. “Folks can share our campaign memes, read up on the issue, contribute to the #SWATStories project, submit to the #noSWATzone zine against police militarization, sign the petition and join the call-in day,” she said.

Whether advocates endorse police reform or rally for abolition, for real change to occur these use of force cultures must be made visible. Campaigners are connecting the dots, making links between the killings of unarmed black men, the aggressive SWAT raids of migrants’ homes and corporate-sponsored tactical training conventions like ITOA. Between warrior mentalities and the untreated PTSD and family abuse that spills over at home.

The ITOA conference is just one event in this international use of force industry. “Our organizing to end these trainings requires collaborating city to city,” Solomon said. “Across communities, with an array of tactics and political views, we are demanding shifts in funding, and real solutions to our many crises.”

These forms of nonviolent resistance go beyond calling for policy and legislation reform, to confront the financial, social and emotional problems with policing. “The culture of policing as violent and aggressive, on and off duty, reminds us that we need to reimagine safety and push for massive divestment from policing and the use of force industry,” Southorn said.

Dr. Anna Feigenbaum is a lecturer in Media and Politics at Bournemouth University. She is a co-author of the book Protest Camps (Zed 2013) and is currently writing a book about the political history of tear gas, forthcoming from Verso in 2015. Afeigenbaum [at] bournemouth.ac.uk. Follow @drfigtree on Twitter.

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

=By= Chuck Orloski

Author’s (poem) prologue:  People like me depend upon the internet to help detect where all the decadent American political culture and absent treasury will go into the Terror War night. Recently, my son Dan took advantage of The Wall Street Journal’s offer of a free three month subscription. Consequently, for the past month, I got an open view into Rupert Murdoch turf; areas where top notch Web Site journalists (in dissent) rarely trespass.  There I saw a time weathered (reserve currency) Neon Dollar Sign point to a Far East landscape, for more gold.  And yes – the POTUS election is indeed “rigged” much more systematical than either Hillary Clinton or Mr. Resorts International can let on.

Oh Europe,
remembering IBM and Limeys who walked tight rope
(both ends) to defeat dark competition
and mindful of how we cherished Merkel and Hebdo,
regrettably, you’ve become burdensome parasites –
Fallen down, fallen down… rise up ye Brexit!
For it’s time to pack goat skin tents, “make it rain,”
pivot eastward with us to N.W.O. Asia!

Oh Amerika,
Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” boom,
magically downsized to blip-blip echoes
and Flight Data Animator & the ghost of St. Louis
slug-it-out in a Super Baal cage match.
Continental gloom, Motor City gets a Morgenthau Plan,
Electric City (Scranton) needs a Houdini Plan,
and why don’t U.S. economic lions “roar anymore?” ¹

Oh Iran and Syria, very soon,
N.P.T. fireworks (ones Jerusalem ain’t got!) unleashed.
Russia settles for Tartus, a shooting-rubber duck stand.
ISI orangutangs get one-way tickets to Brazil
and muezzin clowns wander around Damascus-in-ruin,
in search for Six Day War borders.

screen capture

Oh One-Eye Earth Z-lings,
“Welcome to the show that never ends!”
Soon, our halo-laden circus rolls along
a Trans-Siberian Railroad spur to Bangkok.
On Spice, the “West” banks upon mass consumption
of (frozen) Big Macs, and Mayflower’s scheduled
to sail away on eBay, November 8, 2016.
From Greater Israel’s Manifest Jubilee
to Mumbai Promontory Point, the Barneys & Midas
barkers cry, “Oh buddha, are you ready to address
the Four Tigers/Israeli Political Action Committee?”

1 The Wall Street Journal, “Why the Economy Doesn’t Roar Anymore,” by Marc Levison, October 15-16, 2016; Page C1.

[Map: Geopolitical Map of Mackinder’s Heartland theory.]

Charles “Chuck” Orloski lives in Taylor, Pennsylvania and is married to Carol Jean and has two sons, Dan and Joe.  He worked as an Environmental Health & Safety and Project/Emergency Response Coordinator for 22 years until March 2014 retirement, at age 62.  Presently a part-time bus driver for Scranton School District, Chuck has published both articles and poetry at The Greanville Post, Uncommon Thought Journal, Counterpunch, Hollywood Progressive, Linh Dinh State of the Union (Blog), Literary Yard, and Dissident Voice.  He likes to ice skate but dislikes the Northeast Pennsylvania Winters.

Note to Commenters
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We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

=By= Simon Wood

[Photo: Chagossians protest. Screen capture from John Pilger’s “Stealing a Nation.”]

The Chagos Archipelago is a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 individual tropical islands in the Indian Ocean about 500 kilometres south of the Maldives archipelago. It is also home to one of the most shameful and enduring episodes in UK and US history.

In 2007 British historian and journalist Andy Worthington wrote:

The shameful tale of Diego Garcia began in 1961, when it was marked out by the US military as a crucial geopolitical base. Ignoring the fact that 2,000 people already lived there, and that the island — a British colony since the fall of Napoleon — had been settled in the late 18th century by French coconut planters, who shipped in African- and Indian-born laborers from Mauritius, establishing what John Pilger called “a gentle Creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation,” the Labo[u]r government of Harold Wilson conspired with the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon to “sweep” and “sanitize” the islands (the words come from American documents that were later declassified).

Location of Diego Garcia. Click to enlarge.

Although many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, a British Foreign Office official wrote in 1966 that the government’s aim was “to convert all the existing residents … into short-term, temporary residents,” so that they could be exiled to Mauritius. Having removed the “Tarzans or Men Fridays,” as another British memo described the inhabitants, the British effectively ceded control of the islands to the Americans, who established a base on Diego Garcia, which, over the years, has become known as “Camp Justice,” complete with “over 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course.” So thoroughly were the islands cleared, and so stealthy the procedure, that in the 1970s the British Ministry of Defence had the effrontery to insist, “There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation.”

On being deported, Chagossians arrived in Mauritius and The Seychelles to find promises of support and compensation were not kept with many just abandoned on the dock. Many were forced into debt and extreme poverty, whilst rampant inflation severely reduced the compensation’s real value. The little money they eventually received often just paid down debts. Compensation distributed in the 1980s to a limited number of Chagossians was only paid on condition Chagossians signed away any rights to their homeland. Chagossians report this condition was never explained. When compensation did arrive, Chagossians received much less than reported figures, with middlemen skimming off considerable amounts. Many Chagossians have received little or no compensaton to this day. [Sources]

In order to ‘encourage’ inhabitants to leave the island, a number of measures were taken. The UK Chagos Support Association has published eyewitness testimony:

We were then ordered to bring our dogs to the calorifer (a big building). Once there, our dogs, in total around 1,500, were stacked and forced in the calorifer. All doors and windows of the calorifer were then closed, locking the dogs in the building. We then saw 2 jeeps (land rovers) approach the building and back up in such a way as to bring their exhaust pipes as close as possible to a door; the British and American officers managed to connect the exhaust pipes of the vehicles to inside the building; they then left the vehicles’ engines running and went away. By that time, we had realised that our dogs were being killed and that the calorifer had been converted into a gas chamber. Most of us who had brought our dogs there waited to see what would happen; we tried to convince the officers to let them out, in vain. Pretty soon, we heard the dogs starting to cry, then scream painfully. It was one of the hardest scenes ever. The American and British officers failed to realise that people of African origin ie: the Chagossians, could naturally have pets and fall in love with them. We too considered our pets as members of our family; as much as would be hard today for a white family to suffer its dog being gas chambered, it was equally hard for us there. Our children cried so much in pain and sorrow and we all cried. This is still fresh in our minds.

We were then forced to board the ships for Peros Banhos and Saloman Islands. Even though Peros Banhos and Saloman islands were part of the Chagos, we still felt that we were being uprooted from our homeland and in fact we were. Life in Peros Banhos and Saloman was different to life in Diego Garcia and we were emotionally very attached to our Diego Garcia. Most of us come from there.

The ships were scheduled to set sail after sunset. This was very unusual. In fact, this had never happened before. Ships always departed during the day. Once on board, we learnt from one of the crew members that the American and British officers had asked the Captain to leave when it was dark to reduce the chance of uproar and fury on the ship when we saw the ship leaving the lagoon and getting further and further from our land. This is very important to us because it shows that the Americans and British knew that our forced removal would be extremely hard on us and painful, so hard and painful that it could prompt us to cause havoc on board.

We and our well being were worth less than the animals’. These were not even animals which could be consumed or which had a commercial value: They were retired old horses which simply belonged to the plantation’s managers, who had arranged with the American and British authorities (and who had agreed) to have the horses carried delicately.

A Globe and Mail article notes:

Small groups of Chagossians have been allowed three brief visits to the islands. A video of their 2006 visit shows a British officer watching impassively as the islanders sobbed and kissed the ground.

[Note: Detailed information on the plight of the Chagossians and the status of their legal battle can be found here]

Fast forward four decades and the value of Diego Garcia to the US and its allies has become clearer, despite a long campaign of obfuscation and denial by the UK authorities.

It has been used as part of the CIA’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ program:

The British government’s problems with missing files deepened dramatically when the Foreign Office claimed documents on the UK’s role in the CIA’s global abduction operation had been destroyed accidentally when they became soaked with water.

In a statement that human rights groups said “smacked of a cover-up”, the department maintained that records of post-9/11 flights in and out of Diego Garcia, the British territory in the Indian Ocean, were “incomplete due to water damage”.

More:

First the British government denied renditions ever took place through Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean. Then in 2008 it finally admitted the truth:

For a long time, ministers claimed that anyone who thought the UK was involved in renditions was a conspiracy theorist. Here’s foreign secretary Jack Straw in 2005: “Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop.”

Three years later, the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, was forced to confess that this was spectacularly untrue, admitting to parliament that two CIA “rendition” flights carrying detainees had in fact made use of the British territory of Diego Garcia – an atoll in the Indian Ocean – in 2002.

Extraordinary rendition violates international law and the United Nations considers it a crime against humanity. Despite this, at least 54 nations are known to have participated in it.

The above instance alone should be a harsh object lesson for anyone – corporate media journalists in particular – who reflexively accept or uncritically report government statements on any issue, especially on issues of priority or strategic importance to administrations. It should also demonstrate that allegations that even top-level government officials dismiss as ‘conspiracy theories’ can be true.

Further demonstration of UK government mendacity came courtesy of WikiLeaks:

[Mauritius Prime Minister] Navinchandra Ramgoolam spoke out after the Labour government’s decision to establish a marine reserve around Diego Garcia and surrounding islands was exposed earlier this month as the latest ruse to prevent the islanders from ever returning to their homeland.

A US diplomatic cable dated May 2009, disclosed by WikiLeaks, revealed that a Foreign Office official had told the Americans that a decision to set up a “marine protected area” would “effectively end the islanders’ resettlement claims”. The official, identified as Colin Roberts, is quoted as saying that “according to the HMG’s [Her Majesty’s government’s] current thinking on the reserve, there would be ‘no human footprints’ or ‘Man Fridays'” on the British Indian Ocean Territory uninhabited islands.”

A US state department official commented: “Establishing a marine reserve might, indeed, as the FCO’s Roberts stated, be the most effective long-term way to prevent any of the Chagos Islands’ former inhabitants or their descendants from resettling in the BIOT.”

Nearly a year later, in April this year [2010], David Miliband, then foreign secretary, described the marine reserve as a “major step forward for protecting the oceans”. He added that the reserve “will not change the UK’s commitment to cede the territory to Mauritius when it is no longer needed for defence purposes”.

“I feel strongly about a policy of deceit,” Ramgoolam said , adding that he had already suspected Britain had a “hidden agenda”.

Asked if he believed Miliband had acted in good faith, he said: “Certainly not. Nick Clegg said before the general election that Britain had a “moral responsibility to allow these people to at last return home”. William Hague, now foreign secretary, said that if elected he would “work to ensure a fair settlement of this long-standing dispute”.

Also only recently revealed, part of the deal to lease the territory to the US included a $14 million discount on the purchase of Polaris nuclear missiles.

Diego Garcia is a vital strategic base for long-range bombing missions and is also utilized for reconnaissance and refuelling. It was used as a launch pad for bombing missions in the 1991 Gulf War as well as in 2001 against Afghanistan and 2003 against Iraq. It now accommodates thousands of military and civilian personnel, most of them British or American.

The Chagossians brought their struggle to the Supreme Court on 22nd June 2015 and a verdict is expected early this year. Furthermore, the leasing deal between the UK and the US expires in December. These two critical events mean that the Chagos issue will soon feature prominently in even mainstream news broadcasts.

Given the geopolitical importance and volatility of the Middle East, it is highly unlikely that the US will be easily willing to give up such a valuable strategic location or allow the return of the original inhabitants and their descendants. Indeed, a taste of the uncompromising US stance on the issue was provided in an undated response to a 2012 petition on the White House official website:

Thank you for your petition regarding the former inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago. The U.S. recognizes the British Indian Ocean Territories, including the Chagos Archipelago, as the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom. The United States appreciates the difficulties intrinsic to the issues raised by the Chagossian community.

In the decades following the resettlement of Chagossians in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the United Kingdom has taken numerous steps to compensate former inhabitants for the hardships they endured, including cash payments and eligibility for British citizenship. The opportunity to become a British citizen has been accepted by approximately 1,000 individuals now living in the United Kingdom. Today, the United States understands that the United Kingdom remains actively engaged with the Chagossian community. Senior officials from the United Kingdom continue to meet with Chagossian leaders; community trips to the Chagos Archipelago are organized and paid for by the United Kingdom; and the United Kingdom provides support for community projects within the United Kingdom and Mauritius, to include a resource center in Mauritius. The United States supports these efforts and the United Kingdom’s continued engagement with the Chagossian Community.

Thank you for taking the time to raise this important issue with us.

The UK’s indifference to international law and human rights – most recently demonstrated in its reckless dismissal of a UN group ruling that Julian Assange is being arbitrarily detained and illegally denied his freedom – is well documented, albeit behind a carefully maintained veneer of respectability. Maintaining this veneer is a key task of gatekeeper journalists who must at all times ensure that officials on ‘our side’ are seen to be extending democratic principles and human rights and are accorded gravitas appropriate to such a noble endeavour. There are times, however – as in this instance – when the truth gets out and the people of the world can see the true face of the UK and its closest ally.

There is a prevailing view, kept carefully intact within the pages of corporate media, that while nations like the US and UK may cut corners from time to time, they nevertheless do what they do because they have our best interests at heart and are keeping us safe from enemies overt and unseen. The Chagos issue is an illustrative example of an inverted reality: that in fact the US and UK – as with all imperial powers throughout history – do exactly what they want in order to satisfy their strategic requirements, paying no mind to international law, to mass killing or displacement of peoples; even the destruction of entire nations. Indeed, international law is simply an annoying inconvenience, something to be worked around in order to minimise resistance to their illegal activities. The opening of the marine reserve while claiming it was done for environmental reasons is a particularly cynical example of this dynamic.

It is for this reason that so much effort is expended in the pursuit of whistleblowers and publishing organizations like WikiLeaks and their staff: these are the people who remove the curtain, exposing epic crimes and cruelty and putting carefully staged reputations at risk. For those who commit such transgressions, persecution, smears and harsh punishments are essential in order to make an example of them and discourage like-minded citizens from following their example.

As even a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Chagossians is unlikely to move the UK government to act against the geopolitical imperatives of the US, the only remaining viable option for these gravely wronged people is significant public pressure on elected officials in the hope that at the very least some measure of redress or compromise that the Chagossians can accept is provided; ideally a return to their home and adequate compensation for the terrible injustices perpetrated upon them.
[Author’s note: Readers can help the Chagossians even in small ways that will take almost no time at all by following this link. I urge you to share this article around and do what you can to help. Further research: Watch John Pilger’s 2004 documentary, Stealing a Nation]

¹ Sand, Peter H. (2009). United States and Britain in Diego Garcia – the Future of a Controversial Base. New York: Palgrave MacMillon. ISBN

Syrian home reconstructed from bombed remains.

Simon Wood is a freelance writer covering human rights, geopolitics, civil liberties, democracy, propaganda and media criticism.  His articles can be found at The 99.99998271% and The Daily 99.99998271%. You can also follow Simon through twitter or Facebook.

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Nauseated by the
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Had enough of their lies, escapism,
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=By= Gary Leupp

[Photo: A U.S. Air Force Boeing B-52H Stratofortress of the 2d Bomb Wing static display with weapons. Credit: Tech. Sgt. Robert J. Horstman – U.S. Air Force.]

“we’re an empire now, we create our own reality; and while you [rational, normal humans] are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.” (Karl Rove, 2014)

The Illegality of the U.S. War on Iraq

One overlooked lesson of the invasion and occupation of Iraq is that international law–even the most fundamental one embodied in Article 2 of the UN Charter prohibiting use of force in international relations–can be violated with impunity, without legal ramifications or sanctions. Even Henry Kissinger–that embodiment of vicious amorality and imperialist aggression–noted in 2002 that the planned invasion would upset the structure of international relations existing since the Treaty of Westphalia 1648. Never mind, it happened anyway.

The U.S.-led assault on Iraq, in a war based entirely on lies–about Iraq’s 9/11 complicity; mobile chemical weapons labs; al-Qaeda training camps; a nuclear weapons program that could produce “a mushroom cloud over New York”; aluminum tube imports to abet that mythical effort; Saddam-backed al-Qaeda Kurds in Iraq producing chemical weapons; Saddam’s maintenance of a missile fleet on 45-minute standby to attack British military bases in Cyprus, as well as Israel, Greece and Turkey; imports of uranium from Niger, a meeting in Baghdad between Saddam and Mohammad Atta, meetings between Iraqi officials with al-Qaeda in Prague and elsewhere, etc.–was obviously criminal.

The war based on lies obviously produced horrific results (half a million dead for no good reason, for example), sharpening international tensions. But it doesn’t matter, in this post-empiricism world, in which (the then George W. Bush aide Karl Rove opined to a journalist in 2004) “we’re an empire now, we create our own reality; and while you [rational, normal humans] are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.”

“We’re history’s actors,” the Machiavellian political operative boasted. “And you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” And he was right, in the sense that forces of decency on the planet have been unable to thwart the actions of the empire in the fourteen years since. And no amount of study and analysis have deterred those actors from their chosen roles.

The so-called “international community” did not punish the U.S. and its “coalition of the willing” henchmen in 2003, even as hapless UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan somberly pronounced the war “illegal.” (Repeat: the Secretary-General of the United Nations, which had rejected the U.S. case for war, stated publicly that the war was “illegal.” Should have been end of story, were there some justice in this world.)

Nor did the American people successfully demand prosecution of such war criminals as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, “Scooter” Libby, David Wurmser, Elliott Abrams, Adam Shulsky, John Bolton etc.

These moral monsters are all doing very nicely in their current careers, if somewhat constrained in their international travels due to the possibility of arrest in certain countries. One must imagine them getting together for the occasional reunion, remembering the good old days of Shock and Awe, sharing Geneva Accords jokes, toasting the fact that they all remain at large, and recently rejoicing together about the likelihood of a Hillary Clinton administration. (In truth, they’ve always liked her).

The Officially-Promoted Ignorance of the People about the Recent Past

Another overlooked lesson is that, despite heroic efforts by countless activists to educate the masses about the criminality of the Iraq war, and its disastrous human toll, the masses seem to have learned nearly nothing. (No, I take that back; I over-speak; I perhaps show bitterness that my own voice crying in the wilderness is so little heard.)

Of course there are millions in this sad country that do understand what’s been going on. But polls suggest that historical memories are short and confused. Suffice it to say that as recently as June 2015 CNN/ORC poll showed that 52% of Americans had a positive opinion of George W. Bush.

Remember him? (I have to ask this–just because some of my college students were just two years old when this happened.) “Dubya” Bush was the president who came to office in that rigged election in 2000 (the one decided when the Supreme Court stopped a recount of votes in Florida, after Bush had received a minority of the popular vote), He was a son of George H.W. Bush, a former president known for his war on Iraq in 1991, who’d been thrown out after one term for his handling of the economy. The second Bush installed a cabinet led by an incredibly powerful and super-secretive vice president named Dick Cheney consisting of big oil representatives, anti-science Christian conservatives and lots of neocons out to remake the whole Middle East on behalf of Israel. These were hand-picked by Cheney, who became the de facto leader of the country during the first four years of the Bush administration.

Bush was the president that used the tragedy of 9/11 (in which around 3000 died) to invade Afghanistan killing tens of thousands. U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban (who had nothing to do with 9/11, by the way) and installed a puppet named Hamid Karzai. (In fairness, Karzai became more independent over time.) But the central government in Kabul has remained weak, at the mercy of the warlords, and 15 years after the Taliban’s “fall” the group controls more of the country (about one-third) than at any time since 2002!

(George W. Bush stupidly conflated al-Qaeda–an international terror network bent on provoking a general Islam-western conflict, to realize some future vague aim of a reconstituted Caliphate, with the Taliban–a Pashtun-based Afghan-nationalist network of militants and clerics that combine traditional “Pashtunwali” hospitality to outsiders, such as bin Laden, and xenophobia. In deposing their rule and imposing a new regime, which after all these years remains fragmented, unstable, corrupt, with warlords-cum-governors continuing to administer provinces, Bush rejected a Taliban offer to turn bin Laden over to U.S. custody and insisted on regime change. He said the U.S. “would not distinguish” between al-Qaeda and the Taliban although he ought to have made a firm distinction. The Al-Qaeda foreigners were quickly driven from Afghanistan in 2001-2. The Taliban born of the Afghan soil and rooted in the anti-Soviet struggle of the 1980s remain, and make advances.

In other words: Bush’s decision for regime change in Afghanistan–supposedly as a response to the 9/11 attacks remotely “directed” by a Saudi man in Afghanistan–was not so much a rational response to the attacks but the seizure of an opportunity to gain control of a large Central Asian Country. Let us not mention for the time being Afghanistan’s position as host for a gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean, or what former President Hamid Karzai estimated as $ 30 trillion in mineral deposits. The point is, Bush did not embark on a “war of necessity.” He triggered an ongoing disaster in Afghanistan. Does it not seem strange that after so many years of training the Afghan Army (180,000) costing so many billions to fight maybe 20,000 Talibs, the U.S. military remains entrenched in Afghanistan, unable to rely on natives to suppress their own crazies who in any case at this point are no threat to the U.S.? It’s not like the Taliban is threatening to attack U.S. soil.)

Worse–for those of you who don’t remember clearly–Bush followed up Afghanistan with the Iraq War, based–to repeat, because you can never ever repeat it enough–entirely on lies.

Yet (since the topic is ignorance) a January 2015 poll showed 40% of Americans and 51% of Republicans actually believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Does that not depress you? If not, what is wrong with you?

Tens of millions of people actively warring against reality live in a dream world induced by viewing their favorite cable network. The problem of ignorance is as terrifying as the problem of bombing, when one leads to the other.

Tired Old Russophobia in the Service of U.S. Imperialism

The people have in general been successfully seduced into a neo-Cold War mentality. Even young people mercifully born after the Cold War are victimized by the lingering Russophobia of that period. It is ingrained in popular culture. (Notice how it figures routinely in Saturday Night Live sketches, for example. Why do you keep doing that babushka character, Kate McKinnon? Don’t you realize how many people you’re insulting?)

The people have been persuaded that Russia is an aggressive power, which has invaded Georgia and Ukraine in an effort to revive the Soviet Union–that “existential threat” to the U.S. throughout the Cold War. They’ve been persuaded to embrace a contra-reality; the State Department (rather like Donald Trump responding to criticism) responds to exposure of its crimes with ferocious counter-attacks.

Russia points out that the U.S. sabotaged the peace process in Syria last month by bombing 62 Syrian soldiers; the U.S. responds indignantly, changing the subject, claiming Russia’s support for the Syrian Arab Army is the basic problem. It suspends talks with Russia on the Syrian problem and warns of the possibility of unilateral actions to bring down Assad. (As the exceptional and indispensable Nation; the last, best hope of mankind; the shining city on the hill, etc., the U.S. has rights transcending normal mundane rights that allow it to smash states at will without any need for apology or even half-persuasive explanation.)

Or the U.S. finances a fascist-fueled regime change in Ukraine in February 2014, toppling a democratically elected president, provoking a secessionist movement in the east and the Russian annexation of Crimea (whose people in fact overwhelming welcomed that re-incorporation), and tells the world that what’s happened is a popular uprising deposing a corrupt Russia-backed dictator, causing peeved Putin to “invade” Ukraine. Notice how the mainstream media never for a moment entertains the possibility that the armed opposition in Ukraine’s Donbass region reflects genuine local feelings and isn’t (and needn’t be) generated by Moscow. They virtually deny agency to the Russian-speakers who constitute the opposition to a regime whose first move was to derecognize the Russian language for official purposes. They fail to mention how the February coup threatened the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, a crucial component in the Russian navy which unlike the U.S. has precious few naval bases anywhere, with the prospects of expulsion and a NATO takeover of Sevastopol.

The Hillary campaign leans heavily on a curious post-Soviet form of red-baiting, even condemning people for merely granting interviews (with Larry King!) to RT Television, the state-funded Russian news channel that I personally find at least as credible as CNN or MSNBC, usually more so. But now Trump’s VP choice, Mike Pence, has jumped on board the Russophobe bandwagon as well, trashing Putin as “small and bullying” in his “debate” with Tim Kaine, and implicitly endorsing Hillary’s no-fly zone. Yes, the entire U.S. political class appeals to a mentality rooted in terrifying ignorance.

If Obama, enjoying his 55% favorable numbers, were to order a general assault on the Syrian state forces tomorrow, “to protect the people of Aleppo from further genocide” or whatever, most people would be unenthusiastic, dubious, and worried. Some especially confused people might be angry, asking why “we” are helping “those people” rather than making America great again, and why we don’t just “take their oil” to make everything better. There would be mass demos, of course. But asininity rules, because it’s been so long cultivated as part of our culture.

Asininity Rules

That’s harsh, you say. But were this not the case, why would this country of 310 million be presented (by its 1% who decide most things) with two options for next oppressor: Hillary who continues to maintain that the destruction of Libya was a good, happy thing; or Donald, who opportunistically inveighs against unpopular past foreign policy (as it seems politically opportune) but generally appears asinine about the world when thinking on his feet. And why does the leading third-party candidate–most kindly received by the monopoly press–keep playing to their script, answering questions about his knowledge of the world that continuously humiliate him, exposing his abject ignorance?

Asininity is pervasive, not because people are stupid, but because it’s publicly supported, subsidized. One of Kerry’s nameless subordinates, or one of Jay Carter’s, texts Andrea Mitchell or Christiane Amanpour or Richard Engel laying down the talking points. The media reports that “officials confirm” this or that about Russia. No mind that six months later investigative journalists explode the disinformation, or at least cast doubt on what were depicted as “slam-dunk” truths; the goal has already been achieved (by the eternally immune), the damage done. And the liars responsible bask in the understanding that they will never, ever, face consequences.

The corporate media is, at it were, infected by members of the most discredited political dynasties–with names like Brzezinski, Cuomo, Scarborough, Bush, and Amanpour–less “journalists” than political operatives whose commonly held system of political values includes knee-jerk, unthinking Russophobia.

That media that unfortunately mediates many minds effectively is mind-bogglingly illogical by its very nature. Its monitors determine the limits. And so an anchor brimming over with moral indignation will inveigh against Russia hackers “influencing U.S. elections” without mentioning that U.S. NGOs backed by the two political parties spend billions influencing foreign elections; that the U.S. State Department boasted the U.S. $ 5 billion to influence Ukrainian politics up to the February 2014 coup; and that the NSA monitors of everybody’s personal emails from the Pope to Angela Merkel to EU trade negotiators?

Or covering a Russian military drill on Russian territory next to the Baltics the talking head will depict it as threatening to Latvia or Lithuania, not bothering to mention the massive drills preceding it in Poland. The relentless expansion of the anti-Russian NATO alliance, from 16 at the end of the Cold War when Washington promised Moscow the alliance would not expand, to 28 members some now bordering Russia itself, is seldom noticed and never questioned. When Trump, loose cannon that he is, raised the question of NATO’s continued relevance and expenses, the Democrats were all over him for departing from a “staple” of the post-war world–something that must never be questioned by a sober-minded person. Instead we are asked to believe that Putin wants to reestablish the Soviet Union and that Russia is the number one existential threat to the United States.

That is, again, asinine. It does not correspond to objective reality. But as Chris Cuomo can tell you, you can get people to believe it.

Thus the imperialism of our times entails gross illegality allowed by mass ignorance. But how to educate the masses, brainwashed as they are by the corporate media in league with the State Department, to seriously, methodically oppose that imperialism? Or, to rephrase, how do we overthrow the system itself?

If I weren’t afraid of being placed on a no-fly list or worse, I would frankly–reasoning logically (just as you can)–opine that nothing less than a revolution will overthrow this rotten, rigged system, always so slickly (and usually, effectively) packaged by its media, but in essence so blood-sucking, so murderous.

It’s so crying out for upheaval–violent, one might suppose, given the national religion of gun violence and the very dim prospect that those who are the problem will ever yield power peacefully. When mass demonstrations against police murder result in the deployment of militarized police, imagine what will befall future crowds seeking to storm the citadels of power in Washington D.C. and elsewhere.

The system is so exposed, in this magical moment, as the two clowns take the stage to show the world the collective consciousness of the U.S. bourgeoisie, distilled into these two small minds that while dissimilar in many respects agree on the basics: capitalism is good, pay for play is normal, militarism is good, the military must be further strengthened, and (recall the common mantra of the two conventions) USA! USA! USA! USA!

If you don’t know what the latter means, it means ignorance, illegality, and imperialism.

The Morning after the Asinine Debate

While I self-medicated throughout to ease the pain, such that the memory was vague this morning, the morning talk shows caused me to revisit last night’s highlights. These included Hillary’s reiteration–yes, even after the Russians have installed their new missile defense systems in Syria which some thought would rule the option out–of her desire to declare a “no-fly zone” over Syria; more Russophobia and Putin-baiting; more crude opportunistic positing of a Putin-Trump bromance. And Trump’s noteworthy but unelaborated disagreement with his running mate on the Syrian issue.

With her coalition of the ignorant, criminal and militaristic–as “deplorable,” surely, as anything in the opposing camp–Clinton will surely win the election. It’s already been rigged (by the mistreatment of Sanders by the DNC, which denied him the nomination; and by DNC-aligned NBC’s conscious effort to give Trump ridiculous amounts of free air time to energize his campaign from its very inception, allowing him to drive out his many Republican competitors and become–as an unwinnable buffoon–Hillary’s dream opponent).

It shouldn’t require any email leak revealed by Wikileaks, Russia or extraterrestrials to “sow doubts” among people in this country (as concerned commentators in and out of government are doing) “about the legitimacy of our democratic system.” The facts speak for themselves. How many DNC top staffers aside from the hideous Debbie Wasserman Schulz had to step down when someone (Russia, Hillary wants us to think) revealed that the party leaders were so upset with Bernie’s popularity that they thought about using both his Jewishness and his lack of apparent religious belief to damage him in the south?

The whole Democratic primary process was in fact illegitimate, and the Republican one no better. The whole thing is a farce, and the deeply unpopular new U.S. president should at the earliest possible time experience what regime change feels like.

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

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We apologize for this inconvenience.

Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?