RT | September 11, 2018

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has said it will “continue to do its work undeterred,” after US National Security Advisor John Bolton threatened sanctions if the tribunal investigates alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan.

The Hague-based court investigates genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes and is backed by 123 countries – but not by China and the US.

“The ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its work undeterred, in accordance with those principles and the overarching idea of the rule of law,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The tribunal’s remarks came in response to a scathing verbal attack launched by Bolton in Washington DC on Monday during a speech to the conservative Federalist Society.

“Today, on the eve of September 11th, I want to deliver a clear and unambiguous message on behalf of the president,” Bolton began, before launching into the blistering offensive against the ICC.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC… We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

Bolton then issued a very clear threat: If the international court continues to pursue the probe, Washington will ban ICC judges from entering the country, prosecute them and sanction their funding. His main objection is the notion that the ICC could have higher authority than the US constitution and US sovereignty.

“In secular terms we don’t recognize any higher authority than the US constitution,” he said, adding that Trump “will not allow American citizens to be prosecuted by foreign bureaucrats, and he will not allow other nations to dictate our means of self defence.”

In November 2017, an ICC prosecutor requested approval to launch a probe into potential war crimes by the US armed forces and the CIA through the torture of detainees in Afghanistan.

However, Bolton didn’t come out swinging solely on the behalf of the US – he also attacked the ICC’s threat to Washington’s “friend and ally” Israel, as the Middle Eastern country faces an investigation into alleged war crimes against Palestinians.

Bolton said the probe into the actions of Israel, which he described as a “liberal, democratic nation,” was unacceptable, and added that any countries supporting the investigation and cooperating with the ICC would be subject to secondary sanctions

via International Criminal Court unfazed by US threats of sanctions over Afghan war crimes probe

Camilo Mejía
Via Tortilla Con Sal
Roberto Huembes Market, Managua, September 7, 2018

On its September 7 article, the once progressive newspaper reports that Nicaragua was brought to a standstill by a general strike called by the Civic Alliance, one of the main opposition coalitions behind the attempted soft-coup, citing how banks and upscale shopping malls in Managua are all closed in support of the strike. What The Guardian fails to mention is that those upscale businesses only represent a small portion within the Nicaraguan sector, which is mostly driven by micro, small, and mid-size businesses that are part of the country’s popular market economy, which in turn employs about 90 percent of the country’s workers. In truth, commerce was business as usual throughout Nicaragua, as these images show.

Market in Matagalpa, September 7, 2018

Market in Granada, September 7, 2018

The paper then quotes Ana Margarita Vigil, calling her the ‘national director of the outlawed Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS).” What they omit is that the MRS was not arbitrarily “outlawed,” it simply lacks the legal status of a political party because its leaders have not been able to obtain more than 1.3 percent of the popular vote, which isn’t enough to qualify them to run in elections.

“With 200 political prisoners and [new] murders every day,” Vigil is quoted, “this strike is just one more sign that nothing is normal here in Nicaragua.” Here, again, The Guardian leaves out vital information. First, since the roadblocks were removed, the only people who have died as a result of political turmoil have been Sandinistas, including Lenin Mendiola, who died as a result of gunshots fired directly from an opposition march in Matagalpa on August 11 of this year.

Another Sandinista, Bismarck Martinez Sanchez, is presumed dead after video evidence of his capture and torture was found on the cell phones of opposition operatives; he was kidnapped at a tranque (or roadblock) on June 29 of this year. Several of the perpetrators of these crimes have been arrested. They are the kind of criminals being called “political prisoners,” by people in the opposition, such as Vigil. . .

via The Guardian Continues its Shameless Misinformation Campaign Against Nicaragua and its People

Call your senators and representative and urge them to cosponsor these resolutions By Brian P. McGlinchey As the world marks the seventeenth anniversary of 9/11, legislators have introduced bipartisan resolutions in both the House and Senate urging the broad declassification of U.S. government documents relating to the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. As with the […]

via Senate, House Measures Urge Release of 9/11 Documents — 28Pages.org

The campaign to rid the world’s oceans of plastic trash marks a turning point on Saturday as a giant, floating trash-collector steams out of San Francisco on a mission to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Over the course of the next year, the device will undergo the ultimate tests and face some tough questions: […]

via Great Pacific Garbage Patch Plastic Collector Set to Launch – By Laura Parker PUBLISHED September 7, 2018 — Just Sayin’

Corbett Report Extras – August 31, 2018

Today we’re joined by Mick Harrison (and David Meiswinkle) of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry to discuss their recent petition to the U. S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York to convene a special grand jury into the unprosecuted federal crimes relating to the destruction of three World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001. We talk about the committee and its formation, the nature and powers of a special grand jury, and what legal options remain for those seeking justice for 9/11.

Show Notes and MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=27961

RT | September 1, 2018

US military officials have put the brakes on a proposed rail project that would connect the Korean Peninsula, underscoring growing differences between Washington and Seoul on engagement with the hermit kingdom.

The governments of the two estranged nations were set to begin preliminary plans for the rail link last week, but their application to send a train from Seoul across the length of North Korea was denied by the US-led United Nations Command. The multinational military body, which traces its roots back to the Korean War, controls movement across the demilitarized zone which separates North and South Korea.

The decision is the latest illustration of Washington’s hardline approach to dealing with Pyongyang. The US has demanded full denuclearization as a prerequisite to any economic cooperation with North Korea, while Seoul has taken a less extreme stance, favoring constructive engagement with its northern neighbor. South Korean President Moon Jae-in had expressed hope that the rail link would be completed by the end of the year. . .

Moon has invested considerable political capital into improving inter-Korean relations and has signaled his desire for large-scale investment in North Korea once sanctions are lifted.

via US military blocks proposed railway linking North & South Korea

Growing up in Britain, I knew nothing of the many crimes the British Empire had committed against my Iraqi ancestors.

by Ruqaya Izzidien

If you grew up in Britain, like me, you probably would not be able to recall being taught anything substantial about British colonial history in school.

The British curriculum dedicates plenty of attention to the violence of others – in Nazi Germany or during the American Civil War – and goes into great detail on a few events in medieval and pre-Victorian English history, like the Plague, the Great Fire of London, and the reign of Henry VIII. But a British school would not teach you anything about the brutality of British colonialism.

We were told nothing of the concentration camps the British army ran during the Boer War, the Bengal famine of 1943 or the massacres of Kenyans in the 1950s.

In school, I heard nothing of the many crimes the British perpetrated against my Iraqi ancestors. No textbook ever mentioned that Winston Churchill, so deeply venerated as a hero and a brilliant statesman, openly endorsed a chemical attack on Iraqi civilians when they demanded independence from Britain.

The British curriculum did not teach me that Britain invited Iraqi leaders for negotiations, only to kidnap and imprison them, that it sent planes to bomb civilians when they refused to pay taxes or that it burned and destroyed villages and towns to quash revolts.

Since I left school thirteen years ago, the situation has hardly changed. When, in 2010, the British government decided to overhaul the curriculum, then-education secretary, Michael Gove, decided to invite an apologist of empire, historian Niall Ferguson, to help. As a result, British textbooks still whitewash the British Empire and fail to address the foundations of white supremacy on which colonialism was built and the lasting impact of imperial policies on colonised peoples.

It was only through the stories of my grandfather – who recounted watching from his window the British march through Baghdad – that I learned there was more to the British Empire than they were teaching us at school.

The uncomfortable feeling of not knowing led me to research extensively the shared history of Britain and Iraq, which inspired me to write a novel set during the colonisation of Mesopotamia.

For me, there’s something empowering about finally being able to level the playing field when it comes to one-sided narratives about the British Empire by telling the story of the colonised, rather than the coloniser.

Yet, the dominant whitewashed narrative of British colonial history seems to be deeply ingrained in the British psyche. Today 49 percent of Britons still think that the British Empire was a force for good that improved the lives of colonised nations and only 15 percent think it left them worse off, according to a survey by market research company YouGov.

There also seems to be a persistent nostalgia for that colonial past. The truth is that in today’s Britain, colonialism sells.

Brits still rush to buy products that play on their romantic notion of colonialism, whether cushions from UK retailer Dunelm Mill’s Colonial Chic line or an  Old Colonial burger from chain restaurant Gourmet Burger Kitchen.

They still enjoy watching TV shows about the lives and romances of rich white people in the colonial era, such as Downton Abbey and Indian Summers, which make no mention of how the wealth displayed on the screen was acquired.

They still go to cinemas to see Victoria and Abdul portray Queen Victoria as an exceptional open-minded monarch and a gracious friend of an Indian servant, as if she wasn’t profiting from the subjugation and oppression of Indians; or watch The Queen of the Desert tell the story of British diplomat and orientalist Gertrude Bell, conveniently leaving out the part about her enabling British colonialism in the Middle East and drawing the arbitrary borders of the Iraqi state.

The commodification of colonialism has even made it to institutions of higher education. In 2015, the Oxford Union decided it was a good idea to serve a drink called “colonial comeback” during a debate on colonial legacy and reparations.

In fact, Oxford University, an institution that has educated half of Britain’s political elite (its rival, Cambridge, educating the other half), has witnessed a pushback against its own colonial past.

Students have called for the decolonisation of the Oxford curriculum, which, they say, is Eurocentric and excludes contributions by women and people of colour.

They have also brought the Rhodes Must Fall campaign to campus, calling for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a British colonial official who is seen by many as the architect of apartheid in South Africa. Their struggle was suppressed by wealthy donors who threatened to cut funding to the institution.

There is still widespread support for revisionism and white-washing of history in conservative institutions like Oxford and beyond. It is unsurprising that it was an Oxford scholar who last year penned an op-ed in The Times defending Britain’s colonial legacy, telling Brits: “Don’t feel guilty about our colonial history”.

This attitude has been adopted by much of the British political elite as well. When asked in 2013 to apologise for the 1919 Amritsar Massacre, in which British troops shot dead hundreds of Indians, then-British Prime Minister David Cameron said: “I don’t think the right thing is to reach back into history and to seek out things that we should apologise for.”

The problem with Cameron’s statement is that colonialism cannot be just relegated to history, forgiven and forgotten.

Its legacy continues to disadvantage former colonies, where artificial borders, the unequal distribution of resources, or their exhaustion have led to conflict, impoverishment and underdevelopment.

Its logic continues to inform political and foreign policy in Britain and elsewhere to this day. It was colonialist thinking that led PM Tony Blair in 2003 to drag the country into another occupation of Iraq, shattering its economy and security and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

We need a curriculum based on an honest, contextualised reading of British history which teaches about the brutality of colonialism. It should educate children about the economic, political and social advantages they enjoy today as a result of the colonial extraction and plunder their country engaged in during the colonial era. . .

 

via It is time to teach colonial history in British schools

Guns and Butter | August 16, 2018

Dear Guns and Butter Supporters and Listeners,

Guns and Butter has been taken off the KPFA airwaves by the General Manager of the station.

I received on Wednesday, August 8th, before Guns and Butter would have aired on KPFA, the following email from the General Manager:

Bonnie,

KPFA will cease broadcasting “Guns and Butter” effective immediately.

We’ve received an avalanche of negative calls and emails from listeners about your uncritically airing of views by a holocaust denier, climate denial and casting the Parkland mass shooting survivors as crisis actors. As steward of our airways, we can’t defend this content to our listeners.

Sincerely,

Quincy McCoy     Kevin Cartwright
General Manager  Program Director

This was followed by removal of the entire KPFA broadcast archives of Guns and Butter, down the memory hole.

KPFA defines itself as “Free Speech Radio” and this reaction is a form of censorship. There was no discussion of these claims, nor any provision for due process or community involvement before these actions were taken.

Background

On July 24th, after registering unique premiums I had developed for the two-week KPFA Summer Fund Drive, I received an email from the pledge room informing me that Guns and Butter was pre-empted for the two-week fund drive. The show had never been pre-empted during fund drives, no reason was given, nor any prior notice.

On July 18th I received one other message from the station – the General Manager forwarded to me two email complaints from listeners, the day Guns and Butter aired The Impact of Zionist Influence in the U.S., a presentation by Alan Sabrosky as part of a panel, Zionism – Deconstructing the Power Paradigm, from an online conference. The GM wrote that he agreed with the criticism, that there was “nothing in the mission that agrees or allows unbalanced issue shows like this especially about a topic as sensitive as this.”
 
Response to Claims

“Holocaust Denial” Alan Sabrosky is a Jewish American war veteran and former Army War College Director at the Strategic Studies Institute. He did not claim that there was no persecution of Jewish people in fascist Germany. The focus of his talk was on present and future perils, specifically war with Iran. Airing his brief comments on WWII is apparently what has angered some people. There could be an equivalent number of people who appreciated those comments but did not choose to send an email about them.

“Climate Denial” (Whatever that means) Programming on Guns and Butter has covered climate disruption, climate extremes, etc. It has not flat out supported the theory that global warming is the future trend because there are other scientific phenomenon and influences on the climate that are being studied such as sun cycles, space weather and the weakening of the earth’s magnetosphere, among other factors, that should be considered.

“Crisis Actors” No one on the show claimed that Parkland student shooting survivors were crisis actors. What was pointed out was that it was suspicious that the student activist whose political narrative was picked up by the media was not even at the school during the shooting, but showed up right afterward.

About Guns and Butter

Guns and Butter is an educational program that provides a platform for opinions and analyses not heard in the mainstream media. The program is not necessarily about what I think or believe, nor does it constitute an endorsement of every thing said by a guest, but an opportunity for thought and discussion by listeners interested in differing points of view. In a time of extreme polarity in our country, open sharing of ideas is where we need to be.

Guns and Butter spearheaded deep analysis of the seminal event of the 21st Century – the crimes of September 11th that no other program on KPFA would deal with. I also produced many hours of original economic and financial programming with Dr. Michael Hudson, Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, Dr. Webster Tarpley, to name a few. You wouldn’t realize it now, but there wasn’t any other financial/economic programming on the station at the time. The geopolitical coverage on Guns and Butter has also been superb. The show has produced outstanding programming on a wide variety of complex and difficult subjects.

Guns and Butter was created by me and a fellow volunteer reporter in the KPFA Newsroom in 2001. It was approved for broadcast by a democratic vote of the KPFA Program Council that included community members. The program is fully edited and mixed for broadcast, and is a more than full-time stressful job to produce. It has aired for 17 years and has raised multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars for the station, which reflects very strong listener support. I have never received any support from the station.

An unprecedented attack on the 1st Amendment right of free speech is taking place generally. Alternative media on the Internet is being removed, not just from social media platforms, but websites themselves have come under denial of service attack. Youtube has for some time been eliminating channels. I have just learned that Word Press is taking down websites. Computer algorithms are clamping down on search engines for alternative news and has adversely affected many popular sites, including Global Research.

It seems that differing viewpoints are no longer allowed on KPFA’s airwaves and that listeners’ feelings are purportedly being protected by station management when it is information, facts and data that should be given the highest precedence by management, not opinions. It is always uncomfortable hearing something that one finds offensive or that threatens to break one out of one’s bubble, but it is an individual’s responsibility not the station’s to take care of one’s own feelings. And rather than management deciding what listeners should or should not hear because of managements’ own personal biases or pressure from special interest groups, listeners’ ability to think for themselves and make up their own minds should be respected and not be subject to censorship of ideas and unknown research from either the Right or the Left, especially when it comes to KPFA which should be guided by the Pacifica mission that includes the following:

To establish a Foundation organized and operated exclusively for educational purposes. ……… In radio broadcasting operations to engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors; to gather and disseminate information on the causes of conflict between any and all of such groups; and through any and all means compatible with the purposes of this corporation to promote the study of political and economic problems and of the causes of religious, philosophical and racial antagonisms.

Guns and Butter is broadcast on WBAI in New York City every Wednesday at 9AM and is carried on many Pacifica Affiliates and will continue to be archived here on the Guns and Butter website.

We need your financial help to sustain our programming, most especially during this extremely difficult time of alternative media censorship, and we thank you for your support. Thank you to everyone who has signed up for monthly sustainable contributions, and to those of you who have made one-time donations. We cannot express enough our gratitude. As always, your donations are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Guns and Butter is a project of Inquiring Systems, a registered 501(c)(3) that has been providing non-profit status to socially responsible organizations since 1978.

via Guns and Butter Banned and Removed from KPFA Radio

The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the scientific well

Monsanto flooded scientific journals with ghostwritten articles and interfered in the scientific process in order to defend its glyphosate herbicides

GMWatch reports, 14 August 2018.

The research article The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the scientific well is a useful peer-reviewed source detailing Monsanto’s – corporate science – deceptive activities aimed at defending glyphosate herbicide, as revealed in the company’s internal documents force-disclosed in US cancer litigation and obtained by US Right to Know in freedom of information requests.

What is it about?

Examination of de-classified Monsanto documents from litigation in order to expose the impact of the company’s efforts to influence the reporting of scientific studies related to the safety of the herbicide, glyphosate

Why is it important?

The use of third-party academics in the corporate defense of glyhphosate reveals that this practice extends beyond the corruption of medicine and persists in spite of efforts to enforce transparency in industry manipulation.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
Examination of de-classified Monsanto documents from litigation in order to expose the impact of the company’s efforts to influence the reporting of scientific studies related to the safety of the herbicide, glyphosate.

METHODS
A set of 141 recently de-classified documents, made public during the course of pending toxic tort litigation, In Re Roundup Products Liability Litigation were examined.

RESULTS
The documents reveal Monsanto-sponsored ghostwriting of articles published in toxicology journals and the lay media, interference in the peer review process, behind-the-scenes influence on retraction and the creation of a so-called academic website as a front for the defense of Monsanto products. . .

via The corruption of science by the industry (agrochemical) — DES Daughter Network