Hillary’s State Department Pressured Haiti Not To Raise Minimum Wage to 61 cents An Hour

http://bit.ly/1TDjgRb

In Haiti, people work for peanuts. Slave wages. Less than $5 per day, but they supply the U.S. with tons of affordable clothing from big-name brands like Levi’s, Hanes and Polo. Haiti’s big advantage, compared to Asia, is their proximity to us, and thousands of Haitians are employed in the textile industry in part because of that. When Haiti passed a wage raise from $.24 per hour to $.61 per hour, American companies were predictably outraged.

U.S. companies, especially the clothing manufacturers, outsource their manufacturing to places like Haiti specifically because they can get away with paying slave wages. They would only support a minimum wage increase to $.31 per hour, and decided to get the U.S. Department of State involved to try and pressure Haiti’s government to keep the wage raise down.

This took place in 2011, and Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State. Our corporations were successful, and Haitians continued to work for worse slave wages than they otherwise would have, all so U.S. corporations could take home higher profits.

At the time, the U.S. Embassy said that the wage increase didn’t take economic realities into account, and that it was a move designed specifically to appeal to the unemployed and underpaid masses of Haiti. Imagine that. Imagine trying to help your people have a better life instead of catering to huge corporations at your people’s expense. The horror.

Here’s how much it would cost Hanes to give its Haitian workers a $2 per day raise ($2 per day is roughly what the wage increase would be):

“As of [2008] Hanes had 3,200 Haitians making t-shirts for it. Paying each of them two bucks a day more would cost it about $1.6 million a year. Hanesbrands Incorporated made $211 million on $4.3 billion in sales [in 2008].”

They just simply cannot deal without that $1.6 million, to the point that they managed to get our government involved in the affairs of another government. It didn’t matter that Haitian families actually need $12.50 per day to make ends meet.

In 2012, everyone from Clinton herself, to celebrities like Ben Stiller and Sean Penn, gathered at the opening of a new industrial park in Haiti. In 2015, Hillary said this about it:

“We had learnt that supporting long-term prosperity in Haiti meant more than providing aid. So we shifted our assistance to investment to address some of the biggest challenges facing this country: creating jobs and sustainable economic growth.”

She promised jobs, but when people hear a promise of jobs, they generally assume those jobs will allow them to support themselves. The jobs we’ve created in Haiti do nothing of the sort. Some Haitians feel they can’t complain because any job is better than no job, but on the other hand, those same Haitians wish they were paid more.

This isn’t the first time our government’s gotten involved with another government over corporate interests. We’re beholden to our rich corporations. We apparently owe it to them to make sure other governments don’t eat into their profits by passing laws that protect workers, or do anything else that threaten profits. In 1953, we helped the U.K. overthrow Iran’s democratically-elected president over his nationalization of what would later become British Petroleum, or BP.

Under the guise of stopping communism, we worked with the U.K. to try and install a pro-western government (meaning, a government sympathetic to our business interests there). Iran points to this coup as the reason for their deep distrust of us, and really, who can blame them for that?

In 1954, we overthrew Guatemala’s democratically-elected president, again, under the guise of protecting the world, and our interests, from communism.

What was our real problem there? We were worried that their new president would turn land over to poorer members of its society and create a middle class. Oh, the sheer horror. Ordinarily we probably would have kept our noses out of that, however, the land in question was land that belonged to the United Fruit Company, a U.S.-based agriculture corporation. President Arbenz would have compensated them for their losses, but they weren’t having any of that. We got the idea that Arbenz was a secret communist from the United Fruit Company.

For the pursuit of American profit, Guatemala sat under the rule of military dictators for the next 30 years. They are just now emerging from all the shadows of that time.

What happened in Haiti isn’t as egregious, but it is just as insidious in its own way – the U.S. government interfered with a foreign, sovereign government for the benefit of rich American corporations. This particular instance happened under a Secretary of State who promised jobs, but probably didn’t let on that those jobs would pay next to zilch. Investing is good. It’s better than aid, but we’re half-assing it there, all in the name of profit.

GO, DEMS! ESCALATE, ESCALATE! BOOOOOM!! Andrew Taylor, Sept 29, 2016

GO, DEMS! ESCALATE, ESCALATE! BOOOOOOOOM!!

Point: America's NATO Divisions were installed last year immediate to Russia's Borders

Counterpoint: By 2018 A Russian Division will be installed 86 miles from Alaska.

"Last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed that the Russian military plans to establish a coastal defense division in Chukotka, eastern Russia by 2018. Commenting on the defense minister's announcement defense analyst Sergei Ishchenko stated: "...it's obvious that this is not just ordinary news, not least because what we're talking about is the creation of a serious military force just a stone's throw away from the United States: only the Bering Strait will separate the Russian coastal defense division from Alaska. At its narrowest point, that's only 86 km away. Therefore, it's worth taking a closer look at this announcement."

Shimon Peres was ‘no man of peace’: Hanan Ashrawi, Sept. 28th, 2016

Shimon Peres was ‘no man of peace’: Hanan Ashrawi, Sept. 28th, 2016 

Former Israeli president Shimon Peres died aged 93. (AFP/File)By Nasoul Nazzal 

http://bit.ly/2cZ7MWn

The Palestinians will remember Shimon Peres, a former Israeli president, prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate as a serial killer and an iconic mass murderer.

He died on Wednesday at the age of 93 due to deteriorating health after suffering a stroke in September.

Palestinian senior officials who spoke to Gulf News dismissed media reports praising Peres for "moderate" policies and involvement in peace efforts.

"Peres's legacy will be remembered by the Palestinians as a tireless advocate for murdering children, perpetuating occupation and uprooting indigenous Palestinians out of their home lands," said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

"When we celebrate and remember the legacy of Shimon Peres and his accomplishments for Israel, we should remember that Peres was the launcher of Israel's nuclear programme, the architect of the Israeli plan to isolate, Judaise and take over Jerusalem, and above all Peres was behind the Qana Massacre of 1996 where more than 100 civilians were killed in a refugee camp in Lebanon," she told Gulf News, adding that he is also responsible for a slew of other war crimes against Palestinians.

As a shrewd politician, Ashrawi said, Peres set the general direction of Israeli colonial policies and dedicated his life to trying to polish Israel's deteriorating image in the international community.

"Due to the bloody and apartheid policies of the Israeli government, which he fully supported, the challenge to improve Israel's image was a tough one," she said.

"Israel had long searched for an acceptable face of peace to be presented to the world and Peres was that face," she said.

Despite his rhetoric advocating peace, some of the most atrocious crimes against humanity were committed under his watch, she explained.

"He basically put make-up on the ugly face of apartheid. He deceived the entire world," she said.

In his early 20s, Peres served in the Haganah, a Jewish militia that existed before the state of Israel was created. The group was responsible for the massacre of Palestinians and uprooting them from their lands.

"He was involved in all of the Israeli wars since the beginning. Massacres were committed and he was the main participant," Wasel Abu Yousuf, another member of the PLO Executive Committee, said.

"He is no man of peace."

U.S. MILITARY IS BUILDING A $100 MILLION DRONE BASE IN AFRICA by Nick Turse, Sept. 29, 2016.

FROM HIGH ABOVE, Agadez almost blends into the cocoa-colored wasteland that surrounds it. Only when you descend farther can you make out a city that curves around an airfield before fading into the desert. Once a nexus for camel caravans hauling tea and salt across the Sahara, Agadez is now a West African paradise for people smugglers and a way station for refugees and migrants intent on reaching Europe’s shores by any means necessary.

Document: U.S. Africa Command

Africans fleeing unrest and poverty are not, however, the only foreigners making their way to this town in the center of Niger. U.S. military documents reveal new information about an American drone base under construction on the outskirts of the city. The long-planned project — considered the most important U.S. military construction effort in Africa, according to formerly secret files obtained by The Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act — is slated to cost $100 million, and is just one of a number of recent American military initiatives in the impoverished nation.

The base is the latest sign, experts say, of an ever-increasing emphasis on counterterror operations in the north and west of the continent. As the only country in the region willing to allow a U.S. base for MQ-9 Reapers — a newer, larger, and potentially more lethal model than the venerable Predator drone — Niger has positioned itself to be the key regional hub for U.S. military operations, with Agadez serving as the premier outpost for launching intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions against a plethora of terror groups.

For years, the U.S. operated from an air base in Niamey, Niger’s capital, but in early 2014, Capt. Rick Cook, then chief of U.S. Africa Command’s Engineer Division, mentioned the potential for a new “semi-permanent … base-like facility” in Niger. That September, the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock exposed plans to base drones at Agadez. Within days, the U.S. Embassy in Niamey announced that AFRICOM was, indeed, “assessing the possibility of establishing a temporary, expeditionary contingency support location” there. The outpost, according to the communiqué, “presents an attractive option from which to base ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) assets given its proximity to the threats in the region and the complexity of operating with the vast distance of African geography.”

Air Force documents submitted to Congress in 2015 note that the U.S. “negotiated an agreement with the government of Niger to allow for the construction of a new runway and all associated pavements, facilities, and infrastructure adjacent to the Niger Armed Force’s Base Aerienne 201 (Airbase 201) south of the city of Agadez.” When the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2016 was introduced last April, embedded in it was a $50 million request for the construction of an “airfield and base camp at Agadez, Niger … to support operations in western Africa.” When President Obama signed the defense bill, that sum was authorized.

Reporting by The Intercept found the true cost to be double that sum. In addition to the $50 million to “construct Air Base 201,” another $38 million in operation and maintenance (O&M) funds was slated to be spent “to support troop labor and ancillary equipment,” according to a second set of undated, heavily redacted, formerly secret documents obtained from U.S. Africa Command by The Intercept. But the $38 million O&M price tag — for expenses like fuel and troops’ per diem — has already jumped to $50 million, according to new figures provided by the Pentagon, while sustainment costs are now projected at $12.8 million per year.

The files obtained by The Intercept attest to the importance of Agadez for future missions by drones, also known as remotely piloted aircraft or RPAs. “The top MILCON [military construction] project for USAFRICOM is located in Agadez, Niger to construct a C-17 and MQ-9 capable airfield,” reads a 2015 planning document. “RPA presence in NW Africa supports operations against seven [Department of State]-designated foreign terrorist organizations. Moving operations to Agadez aligns persistent ISR to current and emerging threats over Niger and Chad, supports French regionalization and extends range to cover Libya and Nigeria.”

The Pentagon is tight-lipped about the outpost, however.

“Due to operational security considerations, we don’t release details on numbers of personnel or specific missions or locations, including information regarding the Nigerien military air base located in Agadez,” Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Michelle L. Baldanza told The Intercept in an email, stressing that drones are not yet flying from the outpost. However, the declassified documents say construction will be completed next year.

The documents offer further details, including plans for a 1,830-meter paved asphalt runway capable of supporting C-17 cargo aircraft and “miscellaneous light and medium load aircraft”; a 17,458-square-meter parking apron and taxiway for “light load ISR aircraft”; and the installation of “three 140’ x 140’ relocatable fabric tension aircraft hangars”; as well as all the standard infrastructure for troops, including “force protection” measures like barriers, fences, and an “Entry Control Point.”

While AFRICOM failed to respond to requests for information about the projects, a May 2016 satellite photo of the site provides a status report. “The image shows that the main runway … has been repaved,” said Dan Gettinger, the co-founder and co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College and author of a guide to identifying drone bases from satellite imagery. “Near the runway there’s a structure that appears to be a future hangar, though it’s still under construction. There’s also a new dirt road that runs a fair distance from the runway to a U.S. base that’s enclosed with a perimeter wall and there are a number of shelters there for personnel as well as a command center. All the things that you’d expect on a base.”According to the documents, Niger was the “only country in NW Africa willing to allow basing of MQ-9s,” the larger, newer cousins of the Predator drone. The documents went on to note: “President expressed willingness to support armed RPAs.”

The U.S. military activity in Niger is not isolated. “There’s a trend toward greater engagement and a more permanent presence in West Africa — the Maghreb and the Sahel,” noted Adam Moore of the department of geography at the University of California in Los Angeles and the co-author of an academic study of the U.S. military’s presence in Africa.

Since 9/11, in fact, the United States has poured vast amounts of military aid into the region. In 2002, for example, the State Department launched a counterterrorism program — known as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which later became the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) — to assist the militaries of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Between 2009 and 2013 alone, the U.S. allocated $288 million in TSCTP funding, according to a 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office. Niger was one of the top three recipients, netting more than $30 million.Drones have long been integral to U.S. efforts in Niger. In 2012, according to the files obtained by The Intercept, Niger agreed to host U.S. drones in Niamey, the capital, on the condition that operations would eventually be shifted to a more remote military base in Agadez.

A U.S. Army trainer coaches a Republic of Niger soldier on marksmanship techniques at an AK-47 qualification range near Agadez, Niger.

Photo: Spc. Craig Philbrick/U.S. Army Africa

In February 2013, the U.S. began flying Predator drones out of the capital. Later in the spring, an AFRICOM spokesperson revealed that U.S. air operations there were providing “support for intelligence collection with French forces conducting operations in Mali and with other partners in the region.” The Air Force recently announced plans to upgrade shower and latrine facilities at Niamey “to serve a steady state of 200 to 250 personnel a day.”

“The U.S. shares that base with France,” said Gettinger. The base in Niamey, he explained, “is strategically important simply because to the north there’s Mali and the threat posed by al Qaeda-linked groups, including al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. … To the south you have Nigeria and Boko Haram, so there’s lots of demand for ISR capabilities.” At Agadez, he noted, the U.S. doesn’t need to share facilities with the French military or commercial aircraft. And it is, he said, “more strategically located than Niamey.”

As UCLA’s Moore puts it: “The recent trajectory of sites and money suggests that Niger is becoming, after Djibouti, the second most important country for U.S. military counterterrorism operations on the continent.”

Re-Electing Jeremy Corbyn: The Triumph of Momentum

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Global Research, September 27, 2016

http://bit.ly/2d7VpZl

He has proven to be one of the most stubborn of creatures in a political sense. Unlike the dinosaur of political thinking he has been accused of being, British Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn continues to survive the meteorites, and more nuanced weapons, directed at him.

The initial strategy from Labour MPs was to oust their leader in July on procedural grounds.  The mutineers (call them the Tories in Labour clothing, the Blairites) failed to get their wishes of disqualifying Corbyn from office by a narrow 18-14 ruling by the National Executive Committee that Corbyn be allowed on the ballot even without the endorsement of 20 percent of his MPs.[1]

Instead of limping away in defeat from contender Owen Smith, Corbyn strengthened his position to be, interestingly enough, Labour’s strongest leader on paper to have ever been elected.

Even prior to Corbyn’s triumph, Smith was nervous at not having the numbers for unseating the Labour leader, suggesting, in an open letter to Labour Party members and supporters that his ideas would remain “as relevant after this contest as they have been during.” When loss is assured, best focus on the non-corporeal aspect of a losing performance.

Corbyn’s numbers proved thumping in their dimensions. There were 500,000 who flocked to the polls, and of those, 61.8 percent went Corbyn’s way, up from the 59.5 percent he garnered in September 2015.  Had 130,000 party members not been deemed ineligible, the victory would have been an even greater massacre of his rival.

Detractors feel a gloomy similarity with previous Labour leaders liked for their resolve and manner but feared for their suicidal streak before ruthless conservative governments worshiping before the market altar. “Our policies,” claimed Vernon Coaker in a typical view of that situation, “have to change. If we don’t change we will die.”

For all that, Corbyn and his movement are more alive than ever, having little desire to expire. He is very much a manifestation of tide and force, a reminder that the Zeitgeist at the moment favours suspicion of central powers divorced from human sentiment. The bureaucrats and party hacks are not in vogue.

Central to that is a good smattering of good old decent socialism that had been much maligned by Tony Blair’s own surgical, and bewitching efforts.  Knowing this to be the case, Smith was always struggling to remind voters within the party that Corbyn did not have a monopoly on the socialist creed.

The machine men and women are the robots to be feared and, more directly, ignored.  Deputy leader 

Tom Watson has been accused of being a “Witchfinder” while past leaders such as Neil (“Lord Kneel”) Kinnock have been reminded of their supposedly perfidious past to workers.

Manufactured in the New Labour hot house of stated reform, the Blairites have begun to rust before the vengeful Corbynistas in the Momentum movement.  Their presence is such as to land suggestions of a “personality cult” in the making.

The irony now is that Corbyn, in an effort to avoid another disruption, will attempt to appoint his own shadow cabinet with minimum influence of the MPs within his own party.  This will also give him a shot at having better control over the National Executive Committee, which has not always been friendly to his efforts.

Swimming on the tide of popularity, any resistance was bound to look foolish, though it refuses to abate.  Individuals like Wes Streeting MP told those at a gathering that, “We the people in this room, and across our party cannot surrender to a political tradition that will keep this party in opposition for generations to come.”[2]

Individuals such as Iain McNicol, the Labour General Secretary, show the gap between the Corbyn movement and party managerialism that emphasises “clause one socialism”.  Parliamentary presence was one thing, the grass roots, with a revived socialist sentiment, quite another.

Former Shadow Health Secretary, Heidi Alexander, who has been niggling and sceptical of Corbyn, only had electioneering, and conservative styled appeal electioneering at that, on the brain.  “What people like me are determined to do is continue fighting for a Labour Party that speaks to and for the whole of the country, and one which is capable of winning the next general election.”

The newly re-crowned leader has also threatened a certain number of de-selections for Labour MPs, and promised to shift the focus on policy making to the lower echelons of the party.  Such a method, in one sense, is an attempt to draw out and marginalize his detractors.

The revenge of history on the New Labour movement is nigh. Each time an effort it made to target Corbyn’s leadership, the party receives a boost in membership.  (There were 15,500 additions the immediate aftermath of his victory.)

Corbyn, even if he is not successful at the next election, has already made his mark on his party by localising interest at the branch level rather than that of the focus group, becoming something of an avenging angel.  This is the social democratic agenda in action, though whether the British voter will give him a chance is another story.

The managers will be terrified, as much for their jobs as indeed for the party. If nothing else, Corbyn will have created something distinct from the Labour-Tory formula that characterised the Blair years.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Notes

[1] https://www.neweurope.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-triumphs-new-labour/
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-shadow-cabinet-elections-mps-labour-conference-a7329631.html

Democrats, this is why you need to fear Hillary Clinton: The NY Times is absolutely right — she’s a bigger hawk than the Republicans, Ben Norton From April 27, 2016

Democrats, this is why you need to fear Hillary Clinton: The NY Times is absolutely right — she’s a bigger hawk than the Republicans, Ben Norton From April 27, 2016 

http://bit.ly/1TwQkbj

"Clinton is the last true hawk left in the race", more belligerent than Cruz and Trump, the New York Times says

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is even more of a war hawk than her Republican counterparts, the U.S. newspaper of record says in a new report.

“How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk,” a long-form article published this week in the New York Times Magazine, details how Clinton’s hyper-hawkish “foreign-policy instincts are bred in the bone,” based on what one of her aides calls “a textbook view of American exceptionalism.”

Clinton’s extreme belligerence “will likely set her apart from the Republican candidate she meets in the general election,” the Times explains, noting “neither Donald J. Trump nor Senator Ted Cruz of Texas have demonstrated anywhere near the appetite for military engagement abroad that Clinton has.”

In the 2016 presidential campaign, the report concludes, “Hillary Clinton is the last true hawk left in the race.”

The almost 7,000-word piece in the New York Times, which endorsed Clinton, details how, as secretary of state, Clinton pressured President Obama to take more aggressive military action in a variety of conflicts, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Syria and more.

Early in her career, Clinton cultivated her hawkish reputation on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she was “looking to hone hard-power credentials,” the Times writes. Eventually, she “become a military wonk.”

One of the biggest influences on Clinton was Jack Keane, a retired four-star general whom the Times describes as “a well-compensated member of the military-industrial complex” and “the resident hawk on Fox News, where he appears regularly to call for the United States to use greater military force in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.”

Keane took an immediate liking to Clinton and took her under his wing. He tutored her on Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and more.

Clinton asked Keane to be a formal policy adviser, yet he refused — not because he opposed her, but rather because he would not endorse any candidate.

Keane was one of the architects of the 2007 Iraq surge, in which President George W. Bush ordered an additional 20,000 soldiers to be deployed to Iraq. At the time, with her forthcoming first presidential campaign, Clinton said she was against the surge. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates later revealed in his memoirs that Hillary had told him her opposition was a strictly political move, a disingenuous attempt to get more votes from a war-weary public.

Clinton went on to privately admit to Keane in 2008 that she thought the surge was successful and had been a good idea. As secretary of state, she pressured the Obama administration to keep more troops in Iraq.

The Times story explores Clinton’s close relationship with the military. One of the many military officials Clinton befriended was Army Gen. Buster Hagenbeck, who turned out to be even less hawkish than she is. The general warned Clinton that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be like “kicking over a bee’s nest.” It’s safe to say Clinton did not heed his warning.

She also befriended former general and CIA Director David Petraeus, infamous for his links to torture and death squads. In 2014, Petraeus insisted Clinton would “make a tremendous President.” A year later, he proposed that the U.S. government use “moderate” members of al-Qaeda to fight ISIS.

No longer needing to moderate her views for election, Clinton did not miss the next opportunity to support a troop surge. In 2009, the Obama administration was debating sending more soldiers into Afghanistan. The president and Vice President Biden were wary of an expansion. Clinton sided “with Gates and the generals,” the Times reports.

“She gave political ballast to their proposals and provided a bullish counterpoint to Biden’s skepticism.” In February, less than a month into office, President Obama announced a troop surge in Afghanistan.

The story features numerous other anecdotes that provide a glimpse into just how hawkish Clinton is.

In the Obama administration’s first high-level meeting on Russia in February 2009, Clinton made her bellicosity loud and clear. She firmly rejected any political concessions to Russia and declared “I’m not giving up anything for nothing.”

“Her hardheadedness made an impression on Robert Gates, the defense secretary and George W. Bush holdover,” the Times reports. Gates “decided there and then that she was someone he could do business with.”

Clinton worked closely with the Bush-era defense secretary. “Clinton strongly seconded” some of his hawkish foreign policy ideas, the Times notes, recalling Clinton had belligerently insisted to her aids “We’ve got to run it up the gut!”

Even after 18 months, the Times recalls Clinton’s staff was “still marveled at her pugnacity.”

“I think one of the surprises for Gates and the military was, here they come in expecting a very left-of-center administration, and they discover that they have a secretary of state who’s a little bit right of them on these issues — a little more eager than they are, to a certain extent. Particularly on Afghanistan,” a former intelligence analyst told the Times.

In Afghanistan, the site of the longest conventional U.S. war since Vietnam — a place where today, despite 15 years of U.S. military occupation, violence is escalating at record levels — Clinton pressured the Obama administration to send more soldiers in.

With her hawkishness, Clinton “contributed to the overmilitarizing of the analysis of the problem” in Afghanistan, an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Times.

A foreign policy strategist who advised Clinton on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the State Department told the Times “Hillary is very much a member of the traditional American foreign-policy establishment.” Like Reagan and Kennedy, Clinton fervently believes “in asserting American influence.”

The strategist added: “Her affinity for the armed forces is rooted in a lifelong belief that the calculated use of military power is vital to defending national interests, that American intervention does more good than harm and that the writ of the United States properly reaches, as Bush once put it, into ‘any dark corner of the world.'”

When the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011, Clinton acted on these views. She pressured the Obama administration to take a more militaristic approach, to arm and train even more rebels than it did, the Times reports.

This is consistent with an August 2014 interview in the Atlantic, in which Clinton blithely wrote off diplomacy in the war in Syria, instead calling for backing the “hard men with the guns.”

This is the kind of “hard-edged rhetoric about the world” Clinton uses, as the Times describes it. The report notes that Clinton has long “channeled [the] views” of her father, “a staunch Republican and an anticommunist.”

The article barely acknowledges Clinton’s leadership in the disastrous 2011 NATO war in Libya, mentioning the country just once. Yet, in February, the New York Times Magazine already devoted roughly 13,000 words to covering Hillary’s uniquely hands-on role in the catastrophic regime change operation.

The almost 7,000-word story also mentions Bernie Sanders only one time, and reduces his campaign to a “progressive insurgency.”

There is no question that Clinton is more hawkish than her opponent. The Vermont senator is not a peacenik, having backed the devastating U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the NATO bombing of Serbia before that. Yet Sanders has injected rare anti-war ideas into the mainstream Democratic debate.

Sanders has steadfastly criticized U.S. regime change policies on numerous occasions; called out Clinton for her support for the wars in Iraq and Libya; blasted the former secretary of state for her insistence that that the U.S. further militarily intervene in Syria; and insisted, contrary to Clinton, that the U.S. must not blindly defend Israel, instead taking a “neutral” position that respects the dignity of the Palestinian people.

Furthermore, both of the leading Republican presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, “are more skeptical than Clinton about intervention and more circumspect than she about maintaining the nation’s post-World War II military commitments,” the Times says.

Trump claims he opposed the Iraq War and wants the U.S. to spend less on NATO, the article notes, while Cruz opposed arming and training Syrian rebels in 2014 and has previously supported Pentagon budget cuts.

The gen­eral election might therefore “present voters with an unfamiliar choice,” the Times concludes: “a Democratic hawk versus a Republican reluctant warrior.”

Ben Norton is a politics reporter and staff writer at Salon. You can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.

The U.S. Has an Israel Problem, and Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill - By Vijay Prashad

The U.S. Has an Israel Problem, and Taxpayers Are Footing the Bill

No other country has received such a large "aid" package from the United States.

By Vijay Prashad / AlterNet  Sept.15, 2016

Photo Credit: pixabay.com

The United States government, led by President Barack Obama, has pledged Israel $38 billion over ten years in military assistance. This money will include Israeli purchase of American missile defense systems—a shield against attack. But this is not what defines the deal. The money will mainly go to Israel’s offensive military capacity that includes weapon systems used against Palestinians—particularly in the frequent attacks by Israel on Gaza. The ‘aid’ package is not only for Israel—which benefits greatly from this largess—but it will be a massive boondoggle for US arms manufacturers. The United States taxpayer will pay Israel $38 billion so that Israel has to turn around and buy weapons systems from the US weapons monopoly firms. This is a cozy agreement, which benefits Israel and the weapons dealers but not the US taxpayer and not the Palestinians. They are the ones who lose.

For the record, each US taxpayer will be paying over $300 per head to the Israelis and the arms industry. Scare resources in this country will go, essentially, towards the illegal Occupation of the Palestinians.

No other country has ever received such an enormous ‘aid’ package from the United States. Israel’s previous deal was for $3.1 billion per year—now raised to $3.8 billion. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted the US to give Israel $4.5 billion per year. Obama’s people resisted that amount, although both the Israelis and the arms industry lobbied his administration. His resistance is not evidence of balance towards the Palestinians. There is no such balance on display here.

Over the ten months that the US, the Israelis and the arms industry worked on this deal, Netanyahu has shown nothing but contempt for the US president and for the tepid concerns of the US over Israel’s illegal settlement program in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s animosity to Obama goes back to the first term of the President, and was underscored by his embarrassingly partisan speech to a joint session of Congress before Obama’s 2012 re-election. The public posturing against the Iran deal and the disdain for the US statements over the illegal settlement policy are part of a long-standing lack of concern by Netanyahu and the Israeli leadership for American policy. In 2011, Netanyahu went to a settlement where he said—candidly—‘I know what America is. American can be easily moved. Moved to the right direction.’ In other words, America’s criticisms are not serious. The $38 billion deal is proof that Netanyahu is correct.

Impact of BDS

What the Israeli political elite fear more than anything else is the shift in public perception in the United States. It is the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement that gives the political class and its US-based Israel lobby sleepless nights. They can ‘move’ Obama, but they can’t so easily ‘move’ civil society. Evidence for a pro-Palestinian stance can be found in the Movement for Black Lives endorsement of BDS, in the connections between the Standing Rock struggle and the Palestinian Youth Movement, and in other social movements—including sections of the US labor movement. On college campuses, Students for Justice in Palestine continue to thrive. New books by mainstream authors provide a richer understanding of the Israeli occupation and have received attention from the chattering classes (most recently Ben Ehrenreich’s The Way to the Spring, which I had reviewed here in June). Pulitzer Prize winning writer Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman—both celebrated American writers—are editing an anthology on the 1967 War, when Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. After a trip to the Occupied Territories, Chabon told Naomi Zeveloff that what he had experienced was ‘the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.’ Chabon, Waldman and Ehrenreich were born between 1961 and 1972—they are the generation that has known nothing other than the Occupation and US complicity in it.

Bans on BDS continue—most recently in New Jersey, where the state pension system has been banned from any BDS action on Israeli firms, and in California, where the legislature wishes to penalize firms that boycott those complicit in the Israeli occupation. The US Congress has put on the table the ‘Combating BDS Act of 2016.’ It is unlikely to pass only because it is blatantly unconstitutional. In 1966, the NAACP called for a boycott of white businesses in Clairborne County, Mississippi, as a tactic to force the community to comply with equal rights provisions. The businesses went to the courts seeking relief against the boycott. Finally, in 1982, the Supreme Court found that the tactic of boycott came under the protection of free speech. It was a constitutionally protected action. The Justices quoted from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, where the Frenchman extolled the right of association. ‘No legislator can attack it without impairing the foundations of society,’ wrote de Tocqueville; this is a sentence that members of the Congress should bear in mind.

Banning BDS actions by firms is an important thrust, but US history shows that it is of little consequence. US firms have routinely gone around sanctions barriers from the days of trading with Nazi Germany to the present. The history of US corporations and South African apartheid is a telling one—and documented at the time by Ann Seidman and Neva Seidman in a series of important articles and books (now sadly quite forgotten). At the urging of Congressman Ron Dellums, an Anti-Apartheid bill went before the Senate, where Republicans filibustered it. When the Act was passed, President Ronald Reagan vetoed it. He called the bill ‘economic warfare.’ Congress passed an override, but the Reagan administration did not enforce the act. ‘Punitive sanctions,’ Reagan said, ‘are not the best course of action.’ At the same time, Reagan’s administration pushed for and won the right to garrote Libya with an economic sanctions regime. Principle was not the issue here. It was politics (Hillary Clinton, for instance, is against BDS since she says sanctions are bad, but she is in favor of sanctions against North Carolina, Iran, and Syria).

If firms are not reliable, more dangerous for the Israel lobby is the turn on college campuses toward a fair discussion of the occupation of the Palestinians. The mere existence of a Students for Justice in Palestine club is occasion for hyperventilation. The most recent example of scandalous behavior by college administrations is at the University of California-Berkeley. An undergraduate—Paul Hadweh—planned to teach a course on Tuesday evenings called ‘Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis.’ Hadweh is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he was interviewed by the New York Times’ Ronnie Cohen about pro-Palestinian activism at Berkeley. The article that came out suggested that campus activism for Palestinian rights was anti-Semitic. Indeed, Hadweh, at that time, said that the reporter kept pressing him to admit that BDS is anti-Semitic. Hadweh’s course alerted the sentinels of the Israel lobby. Forty-three Jewish organizations wrote to Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, suggesting that the course ‘meets our government’s criteria for antisemitism and are intended to indoctrinate students to hate the Jewish state.’ Dirks, who will step down at the end of the year because of corruption charges, suspended the course.

A student designs a course. It has a faculty sponsor (Hatem Bazian) and another faculty member (Keith Feldman) has agreed to come speak to the class. It goes through the formal process for the acceptance of the course. All that takes place. Then an outside group says that the course is distasteful to it and the senior administration suspends the course. When BDS activists call for the academic boycott of Israeli institutions that are complicit in the occupation of the Palestinians, they are charged—often by these very organizations—for the violation of academic freedom. In this case, there is no protection of academic freedom.

The United States government donates scarce taxpayer money to finance the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Criticism inside the United States of the occupation itself grows—whether on college campuses, in religious institutions or in labor unions. Unprincipled attempts by the Israel lobby—helped on by the US and Israeli political elite—to change the tide will not be successful. Sure, one class was cancelled. Others will be taught. Hadweh’s guest speaker—Keith Feldman—has written a wonderful book (A Shadow Over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America), which unravels the US-Israeli ‘special relationship.’ Voices such as Feldman's will not be easy to silence. Hadweh is a student. He will graduate. He will continue to be part of the conversation. That is the tide. It cannot be dammed. This $38 billion deal represents yesterday’s consensus. The emerging consensus will not be prepared to underwrite the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinians.

Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter(AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South(Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution(University of California Press, 2016). His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.

Twenty-six years after Velvet Revolution, Czech Communists say history’s still in their favour, Czech Radio 7, Radio Prague

Twenty-six years after Velvet Revolution, Czech Communists say history’s still in their favour

17-11-2015 | Jan Richter

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Since the fall of communism, the Czech Communist party The Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy, KSČM) has established itself well on the Czech political scene. It has a stable support base, and since 1990 has not been voted out of the lower house. What is the Communist Party’s appeal for Czech voters? What is its role in the country’s political system? And what are the outlooks for the Czech Communist movement?

The leader of the Communist Party Vojtěch Filip, photo: Filip Jandourek




The end of one-party rule was one of the slogans frequently heard at public rallies during the Velvet Revolution 26 years ago. Indeed, the Czechoslovak Parliament changed the Constitution as early as November 29, cancelling Article 4 which maintained the Communist party was “the leading power in the society and the country.”

On that day, the Communist party lost its dominant position to become just one of many political groups in the newly formed democracy. But few would guess that 26 years later, its direct successor, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, would be a stable and influential force in the Czech political system. One of the organizers of that student march on November 17, 1989, which triggered the Velvet Revolution, was Pavel Žáček.

“The situation right after November 1989 was very special. There was a general consensus that the Communist party should not be outlawed. In the early 1990s, Václav Havel was one of those who believed that after several elections, the party will naturally disappear in the foreseeable future.

“That was one of the reasons why the party was not banned. As it has turned out, however, the party has survived. It was a very serious mistake that has had a lasting impact on all political processes to date.”

In the early 1990s, there was a general belief the Communist party would gradually diminish both in size and influence. But the group remains a power to be reckoned with on local, regional and national levels.

Josef Skála, an influential Communist politician from Prague, says he knew right from the start the time for the party would come again, despite the massive flight of its members at that time.

“There were many people who left the party in 1989 and 1990 because wanted to follow their careers and spat in their own faces. There were others who left the party because they were frustrated. But there were also those who understood this was not the end of history.

“They knew it was a moment in history which will weigh up all the elements to be reckoned with, and that this big change, let’s say, was inevitably heading towards a big crisis. That was my conviction, and I’m somewhat proud that later developments confirmed my views.”

As its members are quick to point out, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia is formally a different entity than the totalitarian Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.

The group that exists today was officially established in March 1990, during the formative years of modern Czech democracy. For many of those who stayed on, the dawn of the new era was not a time they like to remember.

Communist MP Jan Klán, who comes from a small village in central Bohemia, was in first grade in 1989. I sat down with him in his lower house office and asked him what he recalled from the Velvet Revolution.

“The change was apparent in that for one, we stopped calling teachers comrades which is what I remember vividly. I also remember the change at the post of the president immediately after November 1989 and how the president’s portraits were replaced in the classrooms.

“Looking at the first years after 1990, my mother was the head of a local communist party group – she was the only member in fact after everyone else had quit the party – I remember some things that were not that nice. For instance, people would paint gallows in front of our house, and things like that.”

In 1989, right before the collapse of the totalitarian regime, the Communist party had 1.5 million members, an incredible 10 percent of Czechoslovakia’s total population.

During and after the Velvet Revolution, there was a massive flight, just like in the group in Mr Klán’s village. In 2004, the party had over 100,000 members and the number has since dropped by half. Josef Skála again.

“There were big fears in the early 1990s that the party could be banned. As you know, there were such attempts, with legislation prohibiting a certain category of people from any sort of public jobs, and so on.

“But in the early 2000s, we were successful at the polls both in the national and the European election where we won over 20 percent of the vote in 2004. This showed that today’s Czech president Miloš Zeman was wrong in his expectation the Communist party will disappear due to a generational change. He was wrong, we were alive and well and moving ahead.”

Do you think it was a good idea to keep the name of the party, which your members agreed on, and the party didn’t transform into one a new grouping as we saw in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary?

“I’ll be honest. In the 1992 inner-party referendum, I was proposing a different name because I understood that at that time, it would take away certain pressure. The referendum said what it said and we should respect it but today, the situation is different. I’m not sure that if we changed our name today, it would help.

“Also, the parties you mentioned in other countries – they are all gone. People had big expectations from them but were disappointed. So in this respect, it‘s them who lost, not us.”

Since 1990, the Communist party’s ideology has undergone major alterations. Addressing requests to disband the party on grounds of extremism, the Czech Interior Ministry has repeatedly ascertained the Communist party does not pose a threat to democracy.

The Communists still want to achieve socialism but unlike their predecessors, they say they want to arrive there via democratic and pluralistic means. Jan Klán joined the party in 2003, and has been a communist MP since 2010.

“We see the future in socialism, in a socially-just society. The 2008 crisis showed that capitalism is not working properly, so we are searching for a system that would replace it and end the plundering of the planet and the enormous social inequality. If that does not happen, we will face worse crises than the one in 2008.”

With time, these views, along with consistent criticism of the country’s post-communist transformation and apologetic attitudes towards the 40 years of totalitarianism, have paid off.

In the general election of 2002, which followed a four-year rule of a grand coalition, the Communist party scored its best result to date. It received more than 18.5 percent of the vote, coming in third and winning 41 seats in the 200-member lower house.

Another major success, and a more recent one, came ten years later in regional elections. The party did so well that it is now part of regional government coalitions in nine out of 14 of Czech regions, and has one post of the regional governor.

Pavel Žáček, photo: Anna DuchkováPavel Žáček in 1998 became the first head of the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, a government agency researching documents from the Nazi and Communist regimes. He says the successes of the Communist party have had an adverse effect on the entire Czech political system.

“Since the 1990s until today, there has been no chance to form a left-wing coalition. So it’s not an issue of just one political party. It’s a problem for the entire political system.”

Compared with the 1990s, do you see a shift in how the Czechs view their communist past? In 2010, you were dismissed as the head of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in a big brawl over what it should do and how we should look at the past. Was that a symptom of the changing understanding of the past?

“It’s a symptom of a larger issue. There is a political as well as a moral point of view held by the people trying to redefine what communism was. This has to with a struggle against the post-1989 Czech establishment, and it looks like some part of our past is coming back.

“But I think it’s only temporary but we have to be active and keep explaining these issues, particularly to the young people who are a relevant force when it comes opposing today’s establishment of the Czech Republic.”

Another recurring theme in the Communist party ideology lies in the field of foreign policy. The party remains highly critical of the United States and the West in general, while being much more understanding of the policies of the Kremlin. I discussed their approach to international relations with MEP Miloslav Randsforf, the party’s shadow foreign minister.

“In Russia, there is a radical capitalist regime with many savage aspects. But demonizing Russia is also foolish. The US is not the good guy and Russia is not the bad guy. I think for instance that the [EU and US] sanctions against Russia are irrational and are directed against Europe which is losing more than the United States.

But they were imposed over the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine.

“There is no war in Ukraine. This war was launched by the authorities in Kiev. Over the last year, I’ve been to Ukraine on a weekly basis and I have to say that without these new arrogant attitudes of the Kiev authorities, even Crimea would not make secession.”

Well, Crimea did not make secession; it was occupied by Russian troops.

“So if there would have been positive attitudes towards the decentralization of power on the side of Kiev, even Crimea would remain part of Ukraine. I’ve been to Crimea; nobody was prepared for the crisis and nobody was planning to secede. It was a coincidence of various factors.”

“But the situation in Ukraine is desperate because it’s economically mismanaged. The prices of gas have gone up seven times, the prices of water and electricity three times, the inflation rate is 60 percent. It’s irrational. The real power was handed over not to the people and democratic structures but to oligarchs, and the oligarchs are the ruling force in Ukraine.”

Following the 2008 global financial crisis, dissatisfaction with capitalism took solid roots in Greece, Spain and other countries in Europe and elsewhere. Is this an opportunity for the Czech Communists to position themselves as leader of these “liquid” movements and win over new supporters? Josef Skála is sceptical of groups such as Greece’s Syriza and Spain’s Podemos but is certain that in the future, the Communist party will grow.

“The season for the Communist party is yet to come. The crisis of overproduction and of capital, is converting into a permanent state. You see it on a number of issues – the Greek crisis, the Ukrainian crisis, the migration wave, or the TTIP story that is a big danger of Europe and is another desperate attempt by the US to somehow solve their debt trap.

“So the period of a deep crisis is coming and all the key items will again be on the agenda. The question is whether we can tolerate and follow developments moving to an ever deeper crisis, or if there will be a new attempt, a new scenario to overcome the crisis. And I’m deeply convinced, which is a topic for a deep philosophical discussion, that Marxism has many things to about this.”

The question is, however, why should Czechs trust the Communists once again given the fact their attempt at building up a socially just society after the Second World War ended in 40 years of totalitarianism. I asked MP Jan Klán what he would say to that.

“I would tell them that was a different party. KSČM was founded in 1990. Before 1989, the socialist idea was good but the elites also became disconnected from the people. I think that if they had been more flexible, nothing would have happened in 1989 and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia would be here today.”

The lack of modernization has worked well for the Communist party, which has been capitalizing on disenchantment with democracy and nostalgia for the past. But will this be enough for the future, or does the party need to adapt itself to the era of grassroots movements and social media campaigns? Josef Skála says he has a vision to make the Communist party a relevant force.

“Personally, I’m not very happy about the party’s capability to address the new situation which originated after the 2008 financial crisis. It looks as if we are still frozen in the period of the 1990s when it was necessary to make concessions, to be softer, and so on.

“I think the train has moved along but we have not been able to cope. That’s problem which we’ll address at next year’s party congress.

Where, as I understand, you are going to run for the chair of the party?

“Yes, there are certain rumours of this kind, yes.”

While Communist officials are happy to share optimistic visions of their future, others are more sceptical. I discussed the party’s prospects with Michel Perottino, the head of the political science department at Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and a co-author of Between Mass and Cartel Party, a study of recent developments in the Czech Communist and Social Democrat parties. I began by asking him what the Communist party really stood for.

“It is in a sense a party of the past. Trying to understand why this party still exists requires a look back in the history. It is one of the ‘real’ Communist parties in Central Europe in that it was not installed by the Soviets after 1945. So from this point of view, they do have a base in the society. On the other hand, in the 1990s it was mainly a party of losers of the transition, at least politically.”

How have they developed since then? What is their attraction now?

“Partly, it’s a continuum. There are people who were in the party and they don’t have any reasons not to support it now.

“But the party has of course adapted to the new conditions. As it has not been in power, they can for instance very criticize issues such as corruption, and present themselves as not corrupt, and as an alternative for the Czech Republic.”

They also present themselves as the only left-wing opposition. How would you describe the party’s values and policies?

“First of all, they claim they are only left-wing party in the Czech Republic. They consider the Social Democrats to be centrists.

“They are mainly conservative – socially, economically in the sense that they look back to the system before 1989 and they claim the system was very effective and very positive from many points of view.

They are very different from Western communist parties because they are not a genuine workers’ party, they are not linked to the lowest class of the society. Typically for the post-communist context, it is much more a party of former bureaucrats and pensioners. They might claim they are a workers’ party but the reality is quite different.”

How do you see the party’s attitude to Russia? For decades, they were vassals to the Soviet Communists and they seem to have a soft spot for Russian policies.

“Yes, that’s certainly true to a certain extent. They are one of the last pan-Slavic organizations, and they say that we have to fix the broken ties with the East. So they are active in this respect, although perhaps less towards the former Soviet Union than towards China, Vietnam, and so on. So they are pro-Russian, but not necessarily pro-Putin.

“And another point: although they say they are an internationalist party, they have developed very nationalist and self-centred policies.”

I was going to ask you about that because at school under communism, we heard quite a bit about ‘proletarian internationalism’. What happened to that?

“It’s quite typical for every Communist party, it’s not just the case of the Czechs. It’s also very typical for Communist parties in the West which have developed very nationalist attitudes and programmes, even though they might always claim they are internationalists.

“In the Czech case, it’s also due to the fact they have not been in government and they say they know how to run the country. We can see this on the example of the ongoing migration crisis. To some extent, we could expect the Communists would be positive towards the migrants, and say they are brothers and so on. But they also see them as ‘competitors’ for ‘our people’. So it’s quite difficult for them to cope with this issue.”

One thing that has changed very little since before 1989 is the Communist party’s attitude towards the US. Is that based on pragmatism or rather on their ideology?

“I think it’s mainly ideological that they position themselves against the United States and also against NATO. This is one of the most important themes of the Communist approach to international relations.”

Is this an issue that could drum up support from some of the Czech grassroots movements that in the past vocally opposed some US policies, such as the plan to station an US radar base in the Czech Republic? Are they in a position to bring these groups together?

“I’m not sure that some of those people would want to be drafted by the Communists. The situation is complicated and very heterogeneous. The opposition against the American radar base was formed by other groups, not just by the Communist movement, and the Communists were not very successful in acquiring new supporters.

“They are very conservative and turned inwards. Also, they to a certain degree fear the new movements.”

So you don’t think we will see a revival of the Communist party along the lines of what we see in Greece or Spain where new movements critical of capitalism have emerged?

“I don’t think there are such scenarios in the Czech society. The society is not that comparable to those in Greece and Spain, it is too post-communist to accept new forms of anti-capitalist movements.

“I think the main line here is held for instance by the ANO 2011 group which has a much more right-wing concept of the society.”

How do you see the future of the Communist party? When do you think it will return to power, maybe not in terms of years but of conditions that need to be here for them to be in government?

“Right now, they are in regional governments. On the national level, they are blocked by a 1995 provision of the Social Democrats not to cooperate with them on the national level. This could change but we should not at least two aspects here

“First, I’m not sure the Communists want to play this game because being in the opposition is much more practical and efficient for them. Also, we should expect that if the Communists join government, they will disappear. That is in fact the condition for them to disappear – that they come to power and show they are the same as the others.”

Source: Czech Radio 7, Radio Prague