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Another day, another U.S. outrage. Under the Obama regime, the Pentagon has issued a manual on how the U.S. military is to deal with journalists they don't like. They are to be deemed “unprivileged belligerents,” treated as enemy spies, and subject to assassination. [1]
The “privilege” being stripped from journalists would be the Geneva Conventions, an allegedly binding treaty obligation of the U.S. But as the regime of Bush the Younger already declared those solemn Treaties null and void, Treaties which under the U.S. Constitution carry the same status as Constitutional law, they already are dead letters. The U.S. does what it wants, whenever it wants, as long as it thinks it can get away with it. The only thing that is new here is its open declaration of the fact that journalists are targets of its lethal violence. Although the declaration was done in a smarmy, matter-of-fact way that belies its awful significance. As happens so often in the Obama Regime, they want to slip one past us, reflecting the character of the Con-Man-In-Chief.
And make no mistake- murder is the real intent here. The New York Times asked an unnamed “senior Pentagon official” for an example of a journalist as “unprivileged belligerent” (i.e. someone it's okay to murder, torture, imprison in secret “black sites” or the Guantanamo Bay military gulag, etc., since there are no rules once you discard the Geneva Conventions) and this creature gave the example of the Al-Qaeda assassins who murdered the leader of the Northern Alliance on September 10th, 2001. Who, of course, were not journalists but assassins masquerading as journalists.[2]
In other words, if they don't like what a journalist is doing, they'll be treated as a “terrorist.” You know what that means.
In fact, we know what it means from how the U.S. conducted itself in Vietnam, especially with the CIA's mass assassination program, Operation Phoenix. Or in Latin America, where it created and directed fascist terrorist regimes to slaughter all told hundreds of thousands. Or in Indonesia, where a minimum of 800,000 people were exterminated in a U.S.-instigated and CIA-planned mass murder.
Once the U.S. labels you a terrorist, your life is in grave peril.
The targeting of journalists actually isn't new in practice, as the U.S. has been murdering journalists for years. What's new is the overtness, the declaration of this vileness as official policy. As with torture and assassination generally, the U.S. no longer feels the need to put up a false front. As with outsourcing CIA subversion to the “National Endowment for Democracy,” the U.S. now does matter-of-factly what it used to try and hide. Whereas before U.S. hypocrisy was the tribute its vice paid to virtue, now the mask is off. Increasingly the U.S. sinks lower and lower into the abyss of immorality. [3]
But typically, the Obama White House was smarmily evasive when asked by the New York Times [2] about the Pentagon's newly declared official policy of targeting journalists, as if somehow Obama wasn't Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and chief of the executive branch of the U.S. Government. He does that a lot, trying to fob off responsibility as if he's just a bystander. He's been doing it on other issues to, like “criminal justice reform,” running around saying “Hey, we lock up too many folks,” instead of ordering his Attorney General to stop seeking maximum charges against people, deprioritize “drug” offenses, and use his own powers of commutation and pardon to free Federal prisoners. He's commuted fewer than 100 sentences- and pardoned no one- in all his years in office, vs. “dictator” Vladimir Putin of Russia freeing at least 1,000. Of course, Russia is oppressive, and the U.S. is “free.” That's why the U.S. has three times the prison population as Russia, and a much higher percentage of its adult population imprisoned.
Or maybe, rather than the U.S. sinking deeper into immorality, it is merely the U.S. returning to its roots. It is, after all, an evil empire founded on the twin pillars of genocide and slavery. Many have struggled mightily over the centuries to make it something better, with mixed results. After a brief upsurge of resistance, protest, and rebellion lasting about a decade from the early 1960s to the early 1970s which consisted of disparate strands of black struggle, opposition to the Indochina war, and the Counterculture, the power structure has worked assiduously, using all its arms (every branch of government at every level, the media, corporations, schools, religion, and more) to beat back these movements and especially to delegitimize the ideological content of those movements and re-brainwash and re-indoctrinate the populace in the “correct” attitudes and ideas.
Another factor was the demise of the main force in the world that could check U.S. power and arrogance, the Soviet Union. This emboldened the U.S. tremendously. Bush the Elder even declared a “New World Order.” Meaning an era of unchallengeable U.S. hegemony.
It hasn't worked out that way, due to various factors, including the rise of China, and the stubborn spread of Islamofascism, a huge example of “blowback” from the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan,where the U.S. allied with the most reactionary Islamic elements and with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the two crucial patrons of Islamofascism.
But the U.S. elites are still drunk on power. Unfortunately for them, this arrogance makes them behave stupidly. So instead of seriously countering the rise of the most dangerous rival that looks set to become the next world hegemon in a few decades, China, they've decide to focus on attacking Russia. The U.S. and its Eurostooges creates a crisis in Ukraine, blamed that crisis on Russia, and used that as a pretext to restart the Cold War (and claiming it was Russia restarting the Cold War, for good measure!).
Meanwhile China repeatedly rips off Western businesses in China, and massively infiltrates U.S. computer networks and steals data, including critical information on weaponry, which China has used to build its own advances jets and missiles. The latest (announced) attack was the theft of personal data on 20 million people in Federal databases. Other than scapegoating the (female) head of the agency in question by firing her (Obama is constantly throwing women overboard like that- the same thing happened with Lois Lerner of the IRS and with the first female head of the Secret Service) the U.S. has taken it lying down. It is afraid to retaliate. It is afraid of China. It is afraid to confront China. And you better believe the Chinese rulers know this.
Thus China now has the psychological upper hand. This makes China the dominant “partner” in the “relationship.”
Some reactionary American demagogues will of course blame this on Democratic “weakness” and fecklessness, a card they've been playing since 1946 or so. (Hey, it still works, so why not?) Of course Republican regimes have also practiced appeasement towards China. U.S. policy towards China should rightly be called appeasement, punctuated by occasional “stern” talk. (Shades of Neville Chamberlain!)
The underlying reasons for this effective surrender and submission to China are two-fold. First, big corporations drive U.S. policy. And those corporations are still blinded by the chimera of “a market of 1.3 billion consumers.” The Chinese have cleverly played foreign corporations like fiddles, stringing them along, forcing them into “partnerships” with Chinese businesses that take all their knowledge and technology and methods, and then grab the whole or most of the pie. But the stupid foreigners never learn. GE has handed over critical jet engine technology (nothing like a capitalist selling the hangman the rope to be used to hang the capitalist!) which the U.S. government permitted. (Can you imagine the Chinese government permitting the reverse to occur?) China is a one-party dictatorship in a society that historically is very conformist and regimented, making it far easier to set coherent policies.
The other factor is U.S. cowardice. The U.S. has been spoiled by two centuries of weak enemies and easy expansion. I think the U.S. is basically a big bully, and deep down, bullies tend to be cowards. They fear adversaries they might actually lose to. (Obviously that is not to belittle the personal bravery of the cannon-fodder who do the actual fighting and dying. Don't confuse me with Donald Trump.)
Unfortunately, a world dominated by China (assuming the current one-party dictatorship is still in power) will be no real improvement over a world dominated by the U.S. So from the human perspective, there is no side to root for in this competition for global hegemony.
But at least it won't be total hegemony. True hegemony over the entire planet is a rainbow in the eyes of imperialists. They think it is real, and they constantly chase it, but they can never attain it. Global dominance however is attainable. So unfortunately the crushing oppression they CAN inflict on humanity is very much in the realm of the possible. Indeed, it has been the actual state of (sub)humankind for millennia.
I MAKE THE CONNECTIONS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
1] “The Pentagon’s Dangerous Views on the Wartime Press,” New York Times editorial, August 10, 2015. The manual is cynically titled “Department of Defense Law of War Manual June 2015.” Obviously the actual content is “There Is No Law For US, We Do What We Want!” If you want the Pentagon to capture your computer's IP address, and maybe plant spyware on you, the manual is in .pdf form here or here, Better, just get the pdf from public intelligence.
The Pentagon had it's very own lawyers concoct this 1,204 page pile of excrement, so it MUST be “legal.”
The manual makes a nice bookend to the U.S. Army Field Manual, which instructs soldiers on torture techniques. That's not just my opinion. These torture methods are defined as torture by the United Nations. (But the U.S. holds the UN in contempt, so who cares?)
2] Ibid.
Casolaro was murdered on this very date in 1991 while investigating the secret deal Ronald Reagan and his henchmen made with the Khomeini regime in Iran to delay the release of the U.S. "hostages" until Carter was no longer president. (The "hostage crisis" was the key factor in Carter's defeat in the 1990 election. ABC even started a nightly "news" program, Nightline, to harp on the "hostage crisis" every single night. It was hosted by notorious propagandist and Kissinger sycophant Ted Koppel. It's obvious purpose was to oust Carter, which the ruling class had soured on. The New York Times also spent a year portraying Carter negatively, even running a photo of him out of breath in a marathon and describing him as "panting," i.e. weak and pathetic. Real subtle.)
We should mention in passing U.S. pals that murder journalists. Two of the U.S.' favorite Latin American nations murder scores of journalists- Colombia and Mexico. In fact it is obviously their policy to do so as they've been doing it for years.
But not to be one-sided about this, “bad guy” nations kill journalists too. Iran, for example. And Russia has killed a few- a mere handful, far fewer than those two U.S. buddy nations I mentioned have killed. Which is not to exonerate those execrable regimes. The totalitarian theocrats of Iran hate the “wrong” kind of writers so much that they tried to murder an entire busload of them whom they lured to a fake “conference.” The bus driver tried to drive the bus over a cliff (after jumping out) but flubbed the hit. So the writers all had to be arrested and charged with “crimes” instead.
That latter move is standard procedure in dealing with dissidents and “subversive elements;” paint them as criminals. To return to my own country, that Beacon of Freedom, the U.S. does it incessantly. Just two recent examples (out of innumerable thousands over U.S. history): Randy Credico, who had the temerity to run for Governor of New York State, was punished for this infraction by being arrested and charged wih a non-existent “assault” on police, and Cecily McMillan, who was grabbed by her breasts from behind and mauled by a sadistic New York City cop with a history of violence. (Grantley Bovell, who happens to be black, another example of the fallacy of thinking that the way to change this repressive system is with more black cops.) McMillan blindly swung her elbow backwards, catching her assailant in the head. The Manhattan District Attorney, one Cyrus Vance, Jr., a scion of the ruling class and made member of the U.S. nomenklatura (his daddy was Secretary of State in the Carter regime), following standard operating procedure when the police brutalize someone, indicted Cecily for felonious assault on a police officer. A group of sheep was impaneled as a jury, and Cecily was duly convicted after a “fair” trial (all U.S. trials are “fair” by definition) and imprisoned at the notorious Rikers Island prison complex, where beatings and deaths are commonplace. Also, she was enjoined from engaging in political activity for five years, on pain of reimprisonment. Because the U.S. is a “free” country, you see. (Reminds me of the South African apartheid regime's practice of “banning” people, to politically neutralize them. Come to think of it, the U.S. was an ally and protector of that regime until almost the very end. Hmmm.)
During McMillan's trial, the female prosecutor very convincingly explained the documented bruises on Cecily's breasts by saying she deliberately created them herself. (You detected my irony there, I presume.)
But Credico and McMillan are two of the “lucky” ones. The “unlucky” ones get imprisoned for decades, or are beaten, tased, gassed, or are victims of arson attacks, or are assassinated. (Note to dissidents: whatever you do, don't interrupt a speech by Barack Obama!)
Of course, all the attention of the Western propaganda systems go towards the crimes of enemy nations like Russia and Iran while completely ignoring the often more numerous crimes of the U.S. and its “partners.” (The U.S. media of course is completely despicable in this regard, but the BBC is no better. I have yet to hear a mention on BBC of the murder of journalists and labor organizers, among others, in Colombia. They only “report” on Colombia to demonize FARC, the guerrilla movement there. So is the BBC journalism or propaganda?)
I MAKE THE CONNECTIONS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
The “privilege” being stripped from journalists would be the Geneva Conventions, an allegedly binding treaty obligation of the U.S. But as the regime of Bush the Younger already declared those solemn Treaties null and void, Treaties which under the U.S. Constitution carry the same status as Constitutional law, they already are dead letters. The U.S. does what it wants, whenever it wants, as long as it thinks it can get away with it. The only thing that is new here is its open declaration of the fact that journalists are targets of its lethal violence. Although the declaration was done in a smarmy, matter-of-fact way that belies its awful significance. As happens so often in the Obama Regime, they want to slip one past us, reflecting the character of the Con-Man-In-Chief.
And make no mistake- murder is the real intent here. The New York Times asked an unnamed “senior Pentagon official” for an example of a journalist as “unprivileged belligerent” (i.e. someone it's okay to murder, torture, imprison in secret “black sites” or the Guantanamo Bay military gulag, etc., since there are no rules once you discard the Geneva Conventions) and this creature gave the example of the Al-Qaeda assassins who murdered the leader of the Northern Alliance on September 10th, 2001. Who, of course, were not journalists but assassins masquerading as journalists.[2]
In other words, if they don't like what a journalist is doing, they'll be treated as a “terrorist.” You know what that means.
In fact, we know what it means from how the U.S. conducted itself in Vietnam, especially with the CIA's mass assassination program, Operation Phoenix. Or in Latin America, where it created and directed fascist terrorist regimes to slaughter all told hundreds of thousands. Or in Indonesia, where a minimum of 800,000 people were exterminated in a U.S.-instigated and CIA-planned mass murder.
Once the U.S. labels you a terrorist, your life is in grave peril.
The targeting of journalists actually isn't new in practice, as the U.S. has been murdering journalists for years. What's new is the overtness, the declaration of this vileness as official policy. As with torture and assassination generally, the U.S. no longer feels the need to put up a false front. As with outsourcing CIA subversion to the “National Endowment for Democracy,” the U.S. now does matter-of-factly what it used to try and hide. Whereas before U.S. hypocrisy was the tribute its vice paid to virtue, now the mask is off. Increasingly the U.S. sinks lower and lower into the abyss of immorality. [3]
But typically, the Obama White House was smarmily evasive when asked by the New York Times [2] about the Pentagon's newly declared official policy of targeting journalists, as if somehow Obama wasn't Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and chief of the executive branch of the U.S. Government. He does that a lot, trying to fob off responsibility as if he's just a bystander. He's been doing it on other issues to, like “criminal justice reform,” running around saying “Hey, we lock up too many folks,” instead of ordering his Attorney General to stop seeking maximum charges against people, deprioritize “drug” offenses, and use his own powers of commutation and pardon to free Federal prisoners. He's commuted fewer than 100 sentences- and pardoned no one- in all his years in office, vs. “dictator” Vladimir Putin of Russia freeing at least 1,000. Of course, Russia is oppressive, and the U.S. is “free.” That's why the U.S. has three times the prison population as Russia, and a much higher percentage of its adult population imprisoned.
Or maybe, rather than the U.S. sinking deeper into immorality, it is merely the U.S. returning to its roots. It is, after all, an evil empire founded on the twin pillars of genocide and slavery. Many have struggled mightily over the centuries to make it something better, with mixed results. After a brief upsurge of resistance, protest, and rebellion lasting about a decade from the early 1960s to the early 1970s which consisted of disparate strands of black struggle, opposition to the Indochina war, and the Counterculture, the power structure has worked assiduously, using all its arms (every branch of government at every level, the media, corporations, schools, religion, and more) to beat back these movements and especially to delegitimize the ideological content of those movements and re-brainwash and re-indoctrinate the populace in the “correct” attitudes and ideas.
Another factor was the demise of the main force in the world that could check U.S. power and arrogance, the Soviet Union. This emboldened the U.S. tremendously. Bush the Elder even declared a “New World Order.” Meaning an era of unchallengeable U.S. hegemony.
It hasn't worked out that way, due to various factors, including the rise of China, and the stubborn spread of Islamofascism, a huge example of “blowback” from the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan,where the U.S. allied with the most reactionary Islamic elements and with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the two crucial patrons of Islamofascism.
But the U.S. elites are still drunk on power. Unfortunately for them, this arrogance makes them behave stupidly. So instead of seriously countering the rise of the most dangerous rival that looks set to become the next world hegemon in a few decades, China, they've decide to focus on attacking Russia. The U.S. and its Eurostooges creates a crisis in Ukraine, blamed that crisis on Russia, and used that as a pretext to restart the Cold War (and claiming it was Russia restarting the Cold War, for good measure!).
Meanwhile China repeatedly rips off Western businesses in China, and massively infiltrates U.S. computer networks and steals data, including critical information on weaponry, which China has used to build its own advances jets and missiles. The latest (announced) attack was the theft of personal data on 20 million people in Federal databases. Other than scapegoating the (female) head of the agency in question by firing her (Obama is constantly throwing women overboard like that- the same thing happened with Lois Lerner of the IRS and with the first female head of the Secret Service) the U.S. has taken it lying down. It is afraid to retaliate. It is afraid of China. It is afraid to confront China. And you better believe the Chinese rulers know this.
Thus China now has the psychological upper hand. This makes China the dominant “partner” in the “relationship.”
Some reactionary American demagogues will of course blame this on Democratic “weakness” and fecklessness, a card they've been playing since 1946 or so. (Hey, it still works, so why not?) Of course Republican regimes have also practiced appeasement towards China. U.S. policy towards China should rightly be called appeasement, punctuated by occasional “stern” talk. (Shades of Neville Chamberlain!)
The underlying reasons for this effective surrender and submission to China are two-fold. First, big corporations drive U.S. policy. And those corporations are still blinded by the chimera of “a market of 1.3 billion consumers.” The Chinese have cleverly played foreign corporations like fiddles, stringing them along, forcing them into “partnerships” with Chinese businesses that take all their knowledge and technology and methods, and then grab the whole or most of the pie. But the stupid foreigners never learn. GE has handed over critical jet engine technology (nothing like a capitalist selling the hangman the rope to be used to hang the capitalist!) which the U.S. government permitted. (Can you imagine the Chinese government permitting the reverse to occur?) China is a one-party dictatorship in a society that historically is very conformist and regimented, making it far easier to set coherent policies.
The other factor is U.S. cowardice. The U.S. has been spoiled by two centuries of weak enemies and easy expansion. I think the U.S. is basically a big bully, and deep down, bullies tend to be cowards. They fear adversaries they might actually lose to. (Obviously that is not to belittle the personal bravery of the cannon-fodder who do the actual fighting and dying. Don't confuse me with Donald Trump.)
Unfortunately, a world dominated by China (assuming the current one-party dictatorship is still in power) will be no real improvement over a world dominated by the U.S. So from the human perspective, there is no side to root for in this competition for global hegemony.
But at least it won't be total hegemony. True hegemony over the entire planet is a rainbow in the eyes of imperialists. They think it is real, and they constantly chase it, but they can never attain it. Global dominance however is attainable. So unfortunately the crushing oppression they CAN inflict on humanity is very much in the realm of the possible. Indeed, it has been the actual state of (sub)humankind for millennia.
I MAKE THE CONNECTIONS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
1] “The Pentagon’s Dangerous Views on the Wartime Press,” New York Times editorial, August 10, 2015. The manual is cynically titled “Department of Defense Law of War Manual June 2015.” Obviously the actual content is “There Is No Law For US, We Do What We Want!” If you want the Pentagon to capture your computer's IP address, and maybe plant spyware on you, the manual is in .pdf form here or here, Better, just get the pdf from public intelligence.
The Pentagon had it's very own lawyers concoct this 1,204 page pile of excrement, so it MUST be “legal.”
The manual makes a nice bookend to the U.S. Army Field Manual, which instructs soldiers on torture techniques. That's not just my opinion. These torture methods are defined as torture by the United Nations. (But the U.S. holds the UN in contempt, so who cares?)
2] Ibid.
Meet the "public servants" who "legalized" the murder of journalists. Thank you for your service!
3] Examples of the U.S. targeting of journalists for death include the bombing of the Belgrade TV center in Serbia (one could argue whether those were journalists or propagandists, but just as one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, one man's journalist is another man's propagandist); the attack by U.S. Army tank on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, killing a Spanish journalist (the Spanish government, a quasi-satrapy of the U.S., helped the U.S. quash legal cases in the matter); the repeatedly bombings of the Al-Jazeera offices in Kabul and Baghdad (interesting footnote that is deeply buried in the memory hole- British Prime Minister and accomplice to U.S. aggression Tony Blair had to talk Bush the Younger out of bombing Al-Jazeera in its home country, the oil sheikdom of Qatar- you'd think that was an important enough fact NOT to systematically suppress); and the murder of American journalists Danny Casolaro, and of Michael Hastings in California, using a bomb planted in his car and the remote seizure of his car's accelerator, brake, and steering via the car's computer systems. Nor is this an all-inclusive list.Casolaro was murdered on this very date in 1991 while investigating the secret deal Ronald Reagan and his henchmen made with the Khomeini regime in Iran to delay the release of the U.S. "hostages" until Carter was no longer president. (The "hostage crisis" was the key factor in Carter's defeat in the 1990 election. ABC even started a nightly "news" program, Nightline, to harp on the "hostage crisis" every single night. It was hosted by notorious propagandist and Kissinger sycophant Ted Koppel. It's obvious purpose was to oust Carter, which the ruling class had soured on. The New York Times also spent a year portraying Carter negatively, even running a photo of him out of breath in a marathon and describing him as "panting," i.e. weak and pathetic. Real subtle.)
We should mention in passing U.S. pals that murder journalists. Two of the U.S.' favorite Latin American nations murder scores of journalists- Colombia and Mexico. In fact it is obviously their policy to do so as they've been doing it for years.
But not to be one-sided about this, “bad guy” nations kill journalists too. Iran, for example. And Russia has killed a few- a mere handful, far fewer than those two U.S. buddy nations I mentioned have killed. Which is not to exonerate those execrable regimes. The totalitarian theocrats of Iran hate the “wrong” kind of writers so much that they tried to murder an entire busload of them whom they lured to a fake “conference.” The bus driver tried to drive the bus over a cliff (after jumping out) but flubbed the hit. So the writers all had to be arrested and charged with “crimes” instead.
That latter move is standard procedure in dealing with dissidents and “subversive elements;” paint them as criminals. To return to my own country, that Beacon of Freedom, the U.S. does it incessantly. Just two recent examples (out of innumerable thousands over U.S. history): Randy Credico, who had the temerity to run for Governor of New York State, was punished for this infraction by being arrested and charged wih a non-existent “assault” on police, and Cecily McMillan, who was grabbed by her breasts from behind and mauled by a sadistic New York City cop with a history of violence. (Grantley Bovell, who happens to be black, another example of the fallacy of thinking that the way to change this repressive system is with more black cops.) McMillan blindly swung her elbow backwards, catching her assailant in the head. The Manhattan District Attorney, one Cyrus Vance, Jr., a scion of the ruling class and made member of the U.S. nomenklatura (his daddy was Secretary of State in the Carter regime), following standard operating procedure when the police brutalize someone, indicted Cecily for felonious assault on a police officer. A group of sheep was impaneled as a jury, and Cecily was duly convicted after a “fair” trial (all U.S. trials are “fair” by definition) and imprisoned at the notorious Rikers Island prison complex, where beatings and deaths are commonplace. Also, she was enjoined from engaging in political activity for five years, on pain of reimprisonment. Because the U.S. is a “free” country, you see. (Reminds me of the South African apartheid regime's practice of “banning” people, to politically neutralize them. Come to think of it, the U.S. was an ally and protector of that regime until almost the very end. Hmmm.)
During McMillan's trial, the female prosecutor very convincingly explained the documented bruises on Cecily's breasts by saying she deliberately created them herself. (You detected my irony there, I presume.)
But Credico and McMillan are two of the “lucky” ones. The “unlucky” ones get imprisoned for decades, or are beaten, tased, gassed, or are victims of arson attacks, or are assassinated. (Note to dissidents: whatever you do, don't interrupt a speech by Barack Obama!)
Of course, all the attention of the Western propaganda systems go towards the crimes of enemy nations like Russia and Iran while completely ignoring the often more numerous crimes of the U.S. and its “partners.” (The U.S. media of course is completely despicable in this regard, but the BBC is no better. I have yet to hear a mention on BBC of the murder of journalists and labor organizers, among others, in Colombia. They only “report” on Colombia to demonize FARC, the guerrilla movement there. So is the BBC journalism or propaganda?)
I MAKE THE CONNECTIONS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
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